Us and Them: School Choice and White Flight in Eindhoven and Tilburg - A Study on School Choice Processes and The Reification of Group Boundaries in Dutch Primary Education

                                                      US AND THEM: SCHOOL CHOICE AND WHITE FLIGHT IN EINDHOVEN AND TILBURG A STUDY ON SCHOOL CHOICE PROCESSES AND THE REIFICATION OF GROUP BOUNDARIES IN DUTCH PRIMARY EDUCATION JORGE GALINDO ORTIZ DE ZARATE           Us and Them: School Choice and White Flight in Eindhoven and Tilburg A Study on School Choice Processes and The Reification of Group Boundaries in Dutch Primary Education Jorge Galindo Ortiz de Zarate ANR: 327691 Master’s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences Specialization Intercultural Communication Faculty of Humanities Tilburg University, Tilburg Supervisor: Dr. K. Yagmur Second Reader: Dr. A. Backus July 2015   2   'Forward' he cried from the rear and the front rank died. The general is sat and the lines on the map move from side to side. -Pink Floyd, “Us and Them”   3   Abstract The present study focuses on the phenomenon of white flight and school segregation in primary education in the Netherlands. Recognized as a problem and an obstacle toward integration in the field of policy-making, school segregation serves as an example of the challenges that the integration of immigrant ethnic minority groups currently face. The Dutch education system holds unique characteristics when analyzing white flight, such as its long tradition of unrestricted freedom of school choice, protected in the country’s constitution. Extensive theoretical and empirical writings have aimed at explaining the relations between majority and minority groups in Western European countries where immigration has increased rapidly since the end of WWII. Based on this literature, I propose that school segregation according to ethnicity is a facet of the mechanisms of out-group avoidance and separation of ethnic groups, which shed light on the acculturation processes of migrants and native peoples. I collected my data through open-ended semi-structured interviews conducted amongst parents of children enrolled at a white primary school in Eindhoven or Tilburg. The results drawn from the data analysis of the interviews offer new insight into the attributes of schools that parents consider most important when making their school choice. Furthermore, previous assumptions about what parents look for in a school are contested by the results. It appears that parents are mostly concerned with the language proficiency of pupils, the quality of the facilities and materials, and the attention given to special needs at the schools of their choosing. The study reveals that the school segregation orientations do not fully reflect the parents’ opinions about the multi-ethnic landscape of the country, which hints at a discrepancy between ideals and practice regarding integration of immigrant ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. Future desegregation efforts, it is concluded, will depend mainly on the initiatives of parents to diversify the ethnic composition of schools with their own contribution, as well as improved promotion and administrative strategies of black schools to ‘boost’ their image toward parents.   4   Preface The Netherlands is a fascinating country for those people devoted to the study of inter- ethnic relations. As a country basking in its myriad of colors and creeds, it is the context in which new and unsuspected forms of interaction take place between people so dissimilar from one another that, as Queen Máxima once said, it is hard to pinpoint the defining characteristics of the Dutch. On a personal level, the Netherlands is the place where I realized that I wanted to devote myself to the study of intercultural communication. My first encounter with the country took place in The Hague where I studied for the course of one year as an exchange student in 2011. From the onset, I witnessed the country’s rich ethnic diversity. I remember walking down Stationsweg and wondering if there was any other country in the world where you could find a mosque, standing in front of a Colombian deli shop, in the middle of Chinatown. Once I returned to my home country of Mexico, my ties with the Netherlands were not broken. In 2012, I began working for a Dutch governmental organization in Mexico City, and the feeling that I would eventually be back grew strong. Now living in Tilburg, I have completed my Master’s program in Intercultural Communication at Tilburg University, through which became ever more interested in the topic of migration in the Netherlands. During the first part of my Master’s studies at Tilburg University I had the chance to participate in a course taught by professor Kutlay Yagmur about the shaping of immigrants’ languages and identities. During this course, I learned about the dynamics that are at play in multi-ethnic societies, and the ways in which each ethnic group relates to one another. In an increasingly diverse society such as the Netherlands where immigration is a contemporary reality, the current research is very much influenced by the assumption that inter-ethnic relations are not only defined by the influence of immigrants’ cultural attributes but also, to a large extent, by the attitudes of the hosting society toward them. After an enriching experience attending his course, I chose professor Yagmur’s research topic as the topic of this thesis: white flight and segregation in Dutch primary schools.   5   The phenomenon of white flight and its subsequent effects on school segregation are of great importance to studies about inter-ethnic relations in the Netherlands, as the empirical evidence thereof portrays a separation orientation of the native Dutch majority toward immigrant groups. Therefore, this thesis is dedicated to interpreting the reasons behind why parents opt for white as opposed to black schools. Furthermore, the case of school segregation offers a unique context for analysis because it deals both with the institutional, as well as the social, implications of segregation. Thus, it is important to take a closer look at the mechanisms entailed in school choice processes that further widen the boundaries between the different peoples involved. For the title of my thesis, I chose the name of a song by Pink Floyd. This title, however, should be interpreted with caution. Indeed, it would be risky to assume that people making choices regarding the education of their children do so based only on the ethnic composition of schools. I do not mean to suggest that the general outlook on minorities in the Netherlands is an “us versus them” situation. I can only say, based on the data here presented, that the idea that individuals are inescapably defined by their cultural characteristics has a strong influence on the orientations toward school choice processes in the Netherlands. Even though cultural essentialism is not necessarily a sign of discrimination, it remains a way to treat ethnic groups en bloc, and I conclude that the present analysis on school segregation in the Netherlands further corroborates this.   6   Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my family (mamá, papá y Raquel), since regardless of the distance, and the different time zones, they always managed to give me the much-needed courage, not only for writing this thesis, but also for completing my Master’s program. Just as important, I would like to thank Olivia. Olli, you were my one true companion throughout this whole year, the one who indulged with me on our trips to La Trappe brewery. The one who always motivated me to study harder, and, most importantly, the one who kept me calm in the last stages of this process. Thank you also for your guidance in writing, for the plethora of delicious dishes you made this year, and for the songs we sang together. Thank you to my teacher and supervisor, Mr. Yagmur for his invaluable guidance and feedback. I am more than grateful for his input during our meetings, and his quick responses to my many (many) questions. He was able to infuse such an interest in me for the studies of ethnic relations in the Netherlands, that the choice of a thesis topic was very much the easiest part of it. Thanks to Adnan and Maaike for welcoming me into their homes, and Maaike in particular for providing me with the most valuable information about the composition of primary schools in Tilburg, and for helping me understand the intricacies of the Dutch education system. Thanks to Laura, my Colombian roommate, for your friendship and kindness. To my friends in Tilburg, especially my IESN buddy group: thank you for creating such a close-knit little family. I know that very few groups were able to maintain their ties the way we did after our introduction week last August. I hope that such ties stretch well beyond the Atlantic, or wherever we may wind up. And last but not least, thanks to my colleague and collaborator, Marjolein Gerritsen, without whom I would have not been able to conduct the interviews with Dutch informants, but also without whom I would have not been able to push myself to meet our deadlines. Her support in gaining access to the schools and the parents was invaluable.     7     Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 10  2. CAUSES OF ETHNIC SEGREGATION IN DUTCH PRIMARY EDUCATION .......................... 14  2.1. SETTING THE CONTEXT: MULTICULTURALISM AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN THE NETHERLANDS ..... 14  2.1.1. Migration flows ....................................................................................................................................... 15  2.2. IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION POLICIES IN THE NETHERLANDS .................................................... 16  2.2.1. Language policing in education ...................................................................................................... 18  2.3. INTER‐ETHNIC RELATIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS .................................................................................. 19  2.3.1. Group boundaries between native Dutch and immigrant ethnic minority groups .. 19  2.3.2. Dutch culture and identity ................................................................................................................. 21  2.3.3. Inter‐ethnic contact in the Netherlands ...................................................................................... 26  2.3.4. Views on integration and segregation of immigrant ethnic minorities in the  Netherlands .......................................................................................................................................................... 28  2.4. IMMIGRANT ETHNIC MINORITY PUPILS IN DUTCH EDUCATION ............................................................. 31  2.4.1. Policy efforts toward equal opportunities in education ....................................................... 31  2.4.2. School choice and school segregation in the Netherlands ................................................... 33  2.5. SUMMARY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...................................................................................................... 39  3. METHODOLOGY SECTION ............................................................................................................. 42  3.1. DESIGN OF THE STUDY .................................................................................................................................. 42  3.2. PROCEDURE ..................................................................................................................................................... 42  3.3. ACCESS ............................................................................................................................................................. 44  3.4. PARTICIPANTS ................................................................................................................................................ 44  3.5. INTERVIEWS .................................................................................................................................................... 45  3.6. TRANSCRIPTION OF INTERVIEWS ................................................................................................................ 46  3.7. EQUIPMENT ..................................................................................................................................................... 47  3.8. DATA ANALYSIS .............................................................................................................................................. 47  4. RESULTS ............................................................................................................................................. 49  4.1. PARENT RESPONSES ...................................................................................................................................... 50  4.1.1. Neighborhood .......................................................................................................................................... 50  4.1.2 School choice ............................................................................................................................................. 55  4.1.2.1.  Main attributes of schools affecting school choice processes .................................................................... 56  4.1.2.1.1 Emphasis on language and language arrears ............................................................................................ 56  4.1.2.1.2 Educational philosophy ...................................................................................................................................... 60  4.1.2.1.3 Facilities and materials ....................................................................................................................................... 61  4.1.2.1.4 Educational performance .................................................................................................................................. 62  4.1.2.1.5 Intangible attributes ............................................................................................................................................ 64  4.2. VIEWS ON ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN THE NETHERLANDS AND PRIMARY SCHOOLS ................................. 66  4.3. VIEWS ON INTEGRATION ............................................................................................................................... 69  5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 74  5.1. LIMITATIONS ................................................................................................................................................... 79  5.2. FUTURE APPROACHES TO SCHOOL SEGREGATION RESEARCH AND POLICY‐MAKING ......................... 80  REFERENCES: ........................................................................................................................................ 84  APPENDIX 1. REQUEST FOR PARTICIPATION ............................................................................ 91  APPENDIX 2. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO PARENTS AND DIRECTORS .............................. 92    8  APPENDIX 3. FULL LIST OF INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS .......................................................... 97  (AVAILABLE DIGITALLY UPON REQUEST) ...................................................................................... 97  APPENDIX 4. CODING SCHEME ........................................................................................................ 98  APPENDIX 5. FULL LIST OF INTERVIEW CODINGS ................................................................. 102        9   1. Introduction   The Netherlands has a century-old tradition of being welcoming to migrants (Waldrauch and Hofinger, 1997). From the first inflows of post-colonial and guest-working immigrants, the Netherlands has developed different approaches, both cultural and political, to the integration of immigrant minorities. The so-called allochtoon (non- native) communities in the country have traditionally been composed of four main ethnic groups: Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean (Boschman, 2012), of which a rather large proportion is from an Islamic background. In total, Muslim migrants currently make up for five per cent of the Dutch population (Maliepaard and Gijsberts, 2012 in: Siebers & Dennissen, 2015). In regards to integration, much attention has been paid to the white flight phenomenon in which families with children in primary education flee from their neighborhood schools where the percentages of ethnic minority pupils are high. This phenomenon is linked to increasing degrees of school segregation in the Netherlands. The term black school refers to those schools whose student population is 70% or more non- Western allochtoon (Hogervorst, 2013). The largest groups of pupils represented in these schools belong to the four above-mentioned ethnic groups. Policy efforts devoted to countering school segregation are visible throughout the country, one example being the pilot project initiated in some cities (e.g. Nijmegen), where officials seek to combat this phenomenon through pioneering subscription systems that evenly distribute ethnic minority pupils across different schools (Ministerie van Onderwijs, 2008 in: Ladd Fiske & Ruijs, 2010). Previous studies on white flight have attempted to delineate the reasons behind Dutch parents living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods transferring their children to schools outside of these areas. These studies, such as the one conducted by Boterman (2012), highlight the fact that parents orienting toward segregation is associated with their belief that the values of ethnic minorities conflict with their own, even though many of them consider diversity a “neighborhood asset” (2012, p. 1132). Boterman’s study, moreover, is grounded in the context of cosmopolitan Amsterdam. Therefore, studies focused on middle-sized cities in the Netherlands where ethnic relations are seldom   10  investigated are of much relevance today. Having noted that the Dutch society prides itself in being embracing of cultural diversity, I wished to explore the views on ethnic minorities with regard to school composition, and the fact that these views are often inconsistent with otherwise inclusive attitudes. The purpose of this study is to interpret the causes of white flight in Eindhoven and Tilburg, the 5th and 6th largest cities in the Netherlands respectively (Statistics Netherlands, 2015), as reported by the parents themselves. To this end, I interviewed 21 parents who opted for primary education institutions outside of their neighborhood, in lieu of local, more ethnically mixed options. By exploring the preferences of these parents in detail, I aimed to find support for the idea that the tendencies to avoid ethnic minority groups in primary education are reinforced by factors outside the pertaining domain. Previously, authors such as Vliegenhart and Roggeband (2007) have suggested that the prominence of events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the media generate negative opinions about immigrants, especially Muslim ones. One assumption prior to my study was that the causes for white flight and school segregation could be related to the current political debate that is framed by the problematization of ethnic diversity, and the idea that migrants have consistently failed to integrate in the Netherlands (Alexander, 2013). It is therefore possible, for instance, that the public debate on extremism in the Middle East plays a role in the social contact between the native Dutch majority and immigrant groups. The influence that discursive practices in mass media regarding immigration have, could emerge as an important determinant for parents’ school choice processes. Indeed, without much knowledge about the dynamic acculturative procedures that immigrant groups undergo while living in the Netherlands, the hosting majority is more likely to embrace essentialist views when the discourse on the negative attributes of ethnic minorities becomes more salient. Increased school segregation is partly due to the increasingly prominent public opinion that a multiethnic student population has detrimental consequences on the students. This linkage between ethnic diversity in schools and low educational achievement gained momentum after the publication of a study by Dronkers and van der Velden (2013), which claimed to yield evidence of the   11  negative effects of diversity on test scores. The study was met with fierce criticism from journalists and academics with experience in the field of education, but its findings were nonetheless echoed by numerous media outlets (Huijgen & Petrany, 2010). Studies such as the one mentioned above help to strengthen the idea that an immigrant ethnic background, especially a Muslim one (Dronkers & van der Velden, 2013), correlates to poor academic performance. One common misbelief thereby is that preferences for white schools are found only amongst native Dutch parents, even though previous studies and statistical reports demonstrate that parents of an immigrant background have low regards for multiethnic schools as they too place great emphasis on the perceived low quality of such institutions (De Rycke & Swyngedouw, 1999). Therefore, the present study did not limit its scope by interviewing autochtoon parents who engage in white flight, and instead sought answers from all relevant parents, irrespective of their background. Vasta (2007) has previously noted that migrant-hostile discourses tend to rely on cultural and religious differences. However, considering that school segregation hampers intergroup contact amongst Dutch native and non-native groups, these perceptions often lack a basis founded on direct personal experience. Furthermore, perceptions of threat from ethnic minority out-groups has proven to induce people’s social contra- identification against immigrants (Savelkoul, Scheepers, Tolsma and Hagendoorn, 2010). In the case of the Netherlands, this is mainly aimed at the Muslim community, even though these perceptions are founded on prejudice rather than actual contact (Bobo & Hutchings, 1996). In light of the above, Chapter 2 will expound on the main theoretical notions relating to school segregation and white flight, with special focus on the history of ethnic minority immigration and integration in the Netherlands, and the resulting inter-ethnic relations in the country. One of the fundamental theories comprised in this chapter is the process of boundary making, specifically ethnic boundaries (Wimmer, 2009). Furthermore, the chapter will offer an overview of the most relevant studies on school segregation in the Netherlands and their findings about the reasons for preferring white schools. Chapter 3 will outline the methodology employed for the data collection and subsequent analysis, and will describe the challenges and obstacles encountered in this process. Chapter 4 will   12  detail the results obtained from the analysis of the interview transcripts and codings, and Chapter 5 will further discuss these results and present the conclusion to the study.   13   2. Causes of ethnic segregation in Dutch primary education In the present chapter, I will raise the theoretical notions that are applicable to the interpretation of inter-ethnic relations in the Netherlands, in particular, the phenomenon of white flight. Beginning with an overview of the current ethnic composition of the Netherlands as a result of specific periods and sources of migration, I will give a historic review of the various governmental approaches to immigration and integration. Thereafter, I will describe the main scholarly findings regarding group boundaries, its effects on intergroup contact, and ethnic segregation in the Netherlands. I argue that the native Dutch majority rationalizes out-group avoidance mechanisms, namely white flight, by means of new cultural dichotomies that separate immigrant ethnic minorities from mainstream society, and thus categorize them as ‘second-class citizens’ (Schinkel, 2010). These new dichotomies include secularism vs. Islam, language acquisition vs. language arrears, and the idea that education has divergent positions in the value scales of immigrant ethnic minority groups compared to the native Dutch population. Finally, I will review previous studies on school segregation in the Netherlands and abroad in order to describe the main reasons for parental school choice, as well as the main driving forces of ethnic segregation in Dutch primary education. I will dedicate the last section of this chapter to give a theoretical summary, and to present the research questions I have formulated thereof. 2.1. Setting the context: multiculturalism and ethnic diversity in the Netherlands The ethnic composition of the Netherlands serves as the backdrop for school segregation, and is, in and of itself, the subject of much debate. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) the Netherlands’ estimated population is 16.9 million inhabitants (Statistics Netherlands, 2015). Out of those, more than 1.9 billion inhabitants are of a non-western background. As of 2014, the proportion of non-western immigrants (both first- and second-generation) was estimated at 11%, although this proportion is higher in the four biggest cities of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht). Traditionally, the main groups pertaining to the non-western category come from Turkey, Morocco, Suriname, and the Antilles. Henceforth, I will refer to these   14  groups as the four main immigrant ethnic minority groups. The way in which the concept of ethnicity is circumscribed in the Netherlands is in line with Yinger’s claims (1986, in: Blokland, 2010) that people tend to see ethnicity as a common former citizenship, and a common descent and cultural background. Indeed, Blokland (2010) asserts that Dutch native citizens rely on visual indicators such as dress, skin color, names, and languages to distinguish between various ethnic groups. As I will show in the section regarding group boundaries, the yearly demographics reported by the Dutch municipalities make clear distinctions between different ethnic backgrounds when measuring population numbers in the Netherlands. In 2010, according to van Tubergen (2015), there were about 13 million (79% of total population) Dutch majority members, 384,000 (2,3%) Turkish, and 349,000 (2.1%) Moroccan descendants. Below, I will give an account of the different immigration stages in Dutch modern history that have resulted in its current multi-ethnic composition. 2.1.1. Migration flows In order to understand the current ethnic composition of the Netherlands it is important to look into the different migration periods and the purpose of migration in each period. Immigration in Europe is not a homogenous phenomenon. Every host country has its own peculiarities, considering that the ethnicity of the minorities who settle in them varies widely. Contrary to the idea that foreigners entering Europe represent one single monolithic out-group, Bail (2008) identified four categories, or “axes of differentiation”, in order to compare the interactions between native and immigrant communities across several European countries. These axes were based on a number of factors: “(1) sources and timing of migration, (2) the size and origin of immigrant groups and their position in the labor market, (3) citizenship and civic inclusion policies, and (4) philosophies of integration” (p. 3). The sources and timing of migration in the Netherlands offer a clear picture of the current composition of the country. The first forms of migration of the twentieth century were brought about by decolonization. In the case of the Netherlands, the first immigration flow originated from Indonesia, a former colony that achieved its independence in December 1949 (Zorlu and Hartog, 2001). In 1979, migrants from Suriname, another former colony that became   15  independent in 1975, joined those from Indonesia. Later, in the aftermath of WWII, the Netherlands became a destination for sojourners from several Mediterranean countries, recruited to mitigate the shortage of low-skilled labor, and to rebuild the country from the postwar rubble. In the early 1960’s, low-skilled migrants from countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Morocco, former Yugoslavia, and Tunisia were recruited as guest workers under bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries. In 1970, the total number of immigrants in the Netherlands had reached 235,000 (Penninx, Schoorl & van Praag, 1993 in: Zorlu and Hartog, 2001). After the 1973 oil crisis, recruitment policies came to a halt but the number of new arrivals did not, in part due to family reunification (Penninx, 1982). The Dutch government tried to incentivize the voluntary return of labor migrants and their families by offering financial compensation worth 5,000 guilders (circa €2,500) for those who returned to their countries of origin (Bouras, 2013). This measure was later referred to as the “piss off bonus” (rot op premie) by its critics. Zorlu and Hartog (2001) note that while the number of South European immigrants decreased after the termination of the formal recruitment policies, chain- migration through family reunification from Turkey and Morocco continued during the following two decades. Contrary to the government’s expectations, the majority of migrants from these two ethnic groups decided to remain permanently in the Netherlands (Ladd et al., 2010). It was not until 1979 that political actors formally acknowledged the fact that migrants had come to stay, and the succeeding policies were formulated in order to integrate these peoples fully into Dutch society. Since the second half of the 1980’s, the number of asylum seekers from various countries has increased, and has become the newest form of migration (Zorlu and Hartog, 2001). To this day, Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean immigrants remain the largest ethnic minorities in the Netherlands, and the immigration and integration policies that the Dutch government has put in place relate to this current ethnic configuration. 2.2. Immigration and integration policies in the Netherlands As aforementioned, guest-working programs were initiated under international treaties, and at first, 30% of these immigrants returned to their countries of origin each year   16  (Hartog and Vriend, 1989 in: Zorlu and Hartog 2001). After 1973, unemployment strongly increased in the Netherlands, impacting mainly the immigrants who had remained in the country. Although the Netherlands is lauded internationally as a country welcoming to migrants (Waldrauch and Hofinger, 1997), its grounds for admission for non-EU residents have gradually become stricter (Zorlu and Hartog. 2001). In addition, the policies aimed at the integration of ethnic minorities entering the Netherlands have shifted a number of times over the past five decades. Bouras (2013) recapitulates the decades of constant immigration (1960-2010) and organizes the respective policy frames as follows: (1) return idea (1960-1970), (2) minority policy (1980-1990), and (3) assimilation policy (1990-2010). During the initial stage, Dutch authorities emphasized the importance of migrants of maintaining the cultural identity of their countries of origin, expecting these migrants to eventually return to their homes. With the passage of time, this idea no longer seemed feasible, as it became evident that the migrants would remain in the Netherlands. By 1979 the term ‘guest worker’ was eliminated from public policy. In that same year, the Scientific Council for Government Policy issued a report on ethnic minorities, in which it acknowledged the Netherlands’ status as an immigration country (Kroon and Spotti, 2011). Until the mid-1980’s, cultural maintenance was endorsed and subsidized, but its intended purpose changed. Instead of being viewed as a vehicle for smooth remigration, cultural maintenance was aimed at fostering integration and contributing to an immigrant positive self-image (Bouras, 2013). In short, the period comprising the late 1960’s to the mid-1980’s is characterized by support for the native language and culture. In the beginning of the 1990’s, this approach shifted toward an assimilationist policy, with an increased focus on individual emancipation at the socio-economic level (e.g. educational attainment and access to labor market opportunities). Assimilationist policies, furthermore, emerge from the ideology “that immigrants [are expected to] adopt the public values of the host country (Bourhis, Moise, Perreault & Senecal, 1997, p. 374). From here on, the retention of cultural values from abroad was problematized in the political discourse, and became perceived as a threat to the culturally restrictive civic sphere (Carrera, 2006).   17  2.2.1. Language policing in education Language orientations of immigrant minorities, as investigated in previous studies, is an issue worth considering beyond mere linguistic terms. For example, Yagmur and van de Vijver (2011) state that immigrants of Turkish descent who hold a stronger identification with their in-group are more prone to retain their ethnic language. Owing to the fact that ethnic minority languages have taken center stage in policy debates in the Netherlands, it is important to stress the different approaches that the Dutch government has taken toward language policing throughout the past four decades. Kroon and Spotti (2011) distinguish between three policy periods regarding immigrant language teaching in the Netherlands that match the integration approach toward immigrant minorities at the time these policies were implemented. The first period is characterized by a favorable position toward immigrant languages in schools, either as languages of instruction or as part of additional education about “the language and culture of the country of origin” (Kroon & Spotti, 2011, p. 6). In this period, the Dutch government embraced the idea of allowing immigrants to maintain their own culture, including their language. A policy paper in 1974 showed the preference for this multilingual approach. The immigrant language in education was defined as the official language of the country of origin and it was supported by the policy plan on minorities (Minderhedennota, 1983 in: Kroon and Spotti, 2011). The ‘official’ aspect of immigrant languages thus excluded, for instance, Moroccan Berber or Surinamese Papiamentu from schools, as they were substandard languages in their countries of origin. The subsequent period, marked by a 1989 report of the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR, 1989 in: Kroon & Spotti, 2011) was characterized by support for immigrant minority language and culture teaching, not as part of the regular curriculum, but still taught within the school facilities. The Dutch Ministry of Education did not adopt this recommendation completely, and opted for utilizing the immigrant minority languages as auxiliary languages in teaching other subjects (Ministerie van OCW, 1991 in: Kroon & Spotti, 2011). In 1995, the Ministry adhered to a new report written in 1992 on the importance of developing the non-indigenous living languages in the Netherlands (CALO, 1992 in: Kroon & Spotti, 2011). The goal of this report, if   18  heeded by the government, was to grant equal status to all foreign languages that were spoken by inhabitants of the Netherlands, despite lacking official status in their countries of origin. The implementation of teaching these languages, however, was undermined by the prioritization of Dutch language teaching as a vehicle for integration, as was made clear in a new integration law in 1998 (WIN, 1998 in: Kroon and Spotti, 2011). The last period of approach to immigrant minority languages in education, framed by Kroon and Spotti (2011) is best evinced in the 2001 advice from the WRR to separate language support from language teaching, and to establish local language schools outside of regular education. The WRR moreover chose to rename ‘non-indigenous living languages’ to ‘new modern foreign languages’, to grant them the same status as other modern foreign languages, such as English and German. Contrary to these recommendations, the new government at the time announced the abolishment of non- indigenous living language teaching altogether, and further stressed the immigrant minorities’ need to learn Dutch. Despite criticism of these measures, growing intolerance for inter-language variation in schools is pervasive in current times (Kroon & Spotti, 2011), and it speaks volumes of the “government’s oliglot perspective in policing immigrant minority languages” (p. 13). To this end, the Netherlands is categorized as a country with prevailing linguistic and cultural symbolic boundaries (Bail, 2008), and this typology alludes to the resemblance between the institutional perspectives on language and the opinions of the native Dutch population on linguistic diversity. 2.3. Inter-ethnic relations in the Netherlands 2.3.1. Group boundaries between native Dutch and immigrant ethnic minority groups In the Netherlands, the relations between groups coming from different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds are largely determined by the formation of invisible, yet pervasive, boundaries between them. As stated by Paasi (2003), boundaries are dynamic cultural processes that depend highly on “identity, action, mobility and power” (p. 5). Boundaries define identities, and are, as such, as telling about what one is, as what one is not. Paasi (2003) argues that boundaries are utilized to include and exclude social groupings, not only at a geopolitical, but also at the state and city levels.   19   Bail (2008) discusses symbolic and social boundaries between ethnic minorities and the native Dutch population as two separate dimensions. While the former are configured in terms of characteristics such as religion and ethnic origin, and are defined by majority groups, the latter are institutionalized. Social boundaries are, to name a few, citizenship laws and other instruments of inclusion and exclusion of foreigners, as well as more subtle forms of differentiation, as the one described below. In the Netherlands, group boundaries between ethnic minorities and the native Dutch population are brightened by the official categorization of non-native citizens. Even though the government has set forth policies aimed at the emancipation of minorities dating back to the abovementioned policy plan of 1983, and subsequent anti- discrimination efforts such as the 1994 Equal Treatment Act (Guiraudon, Phalet & ter Wal, 2005), demographic monitoring in the Netherlands still makes clear distinctions between native and non-native peoples. Since 1971, ethnicity ceased to be a self-reported characteristic, and the municipal population registers or GBA (Gemeentelijke Basis Administratie), were now in charge of collecting the relevant data (Guiraudon, Phalet & ter Wal, 2005). The authors indicate that these registers allocate the four main ethnic minority groups under the non-western allochtoon category, and this overarching category helps to monitor their integration in the main public domains; housing, education, and employment. However, Guiraudon et al. (2005) argue that the current monitoring equates non-western ethnic origin with socio-economic disadvantage without looking into the social class origins of individuals whether they are of Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, or Antillean descent. Furthermore, Bail (2008) summarizes previous notions (cf. Goldberg, 2006) that the other kind of boundaries, i.e. symbolic ones, hardly revolve around the concept of race anymore, shifting the focus instead to issues of religion, language, and culture, due to the growing public rejection of racist discourse (Verkuyten, de Jong & Masson, 1995). In Western and Northern Europe, this holds true, especially when discussing religion. Casanova (2007) has delivered a thorough analysis of the current challenges of religious diversity in an increasingly secular Europe. He argues that, in this continent, immigration and Islam are almost synonymous and that “this entails a superimposition of different dimensions of “otherness” that exacerbates issues of boundaries, accommodation and   20  incorporation [by which] the immigrant, the religious, the racial, and the socio-economic [unprivileged] “other” all tend to coincide”. (Casanova, 2007, p. 4-5). Furthermore, Casanova (2007) states that Europeans see the decline in religiousness as a normal and progressive outcome that is the diametric opposite of the archaic retention of religious traditions of Muslims. Bail (2008) contests the idea that religion is a dominant symbolic boundary and mentions that Dutch tradition has, contrary to Casanova’s argument (2007), prompted religious tolerance. However, other scholars maintain that anti-religious, i.e. anti-Muslim attitudes, are very much in place in the Netherlands, and these attitudes vary according to a number of factors (Savelkoul, Scheepers, Tolsma and Hagendoorn, 2010). Savelkoul et al. (2010) argue that the debate on Islam became more politicized after the murder of filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh in 2004. The authors studied the determinants for stronger anti-Muslim attitudes in the Netherlands. Using data on the percentage of Muslims in geographical regions in the Netherlands ranging from 150,000 to 800,000 inhabitants (NUTS-3 regions), Savelkoul et al. (2010) demonstrated that the relative size of the Muslim out-group leads to perceived ethnic threat and consequently induces more discriminatory attitudes from the native Dutch population toward Muslims. Considering that the concentration of ethnic minorities makes contact with them more likely, this appears to be in contradiction with Allport’s oft-discussed intergroup contact hypothesis (1954). Allport (1954) sustained that as long as four conditions are met, namely equal group status; common goals; intergroup cooperation; and the support of authorities, law, or custom, intergroup contact leads to positive effects. Since Savelkoul et al. (2010) did not find significant mediating effects of intergroup contact on diminishing anti-Muslim attitudes, one can argue that group boundaries based on religion between native Dutch and ethnic minority groups of Muslim background are persistent, and may thus serve, for instance, as a deterrent for parents to choose a black school with a perceived large population of pupils of Muslim background (i.e. Turkish and Moroccan). 2.3.2. Dutch culture and identity   21  For the sake of analyzing the forms of intergroup contact between native Dutch and non- western persons, I will outline the main cultural characteristics attributed to Dutch national identity, as informed by public discourse as well as scientific inquiry. When discussing Dutch national identity, I acknowledge its seemingly overgeneralizing connotation, considering the vast “native” diversity that exists within the country. However, this study focuses on the idea of a Dutch identity vis-à-vis the identities ascribed to non-native ethnic minorities in the country. Since the 1990’s, the incompatibility of values and beliefs of non-western migrants with Dutch culture has been repeated ad nauseam. But what exactly are the collective values bolstered by the Dutch? In other words, what are the main features of the so-called Dutch national identity? It might be bold to assert that discussions about ‘Dutchness’ offer more questions than answers, however, in light of past experiences, the Dutch identity debate has caused its fair share of anxiety amongst scholars and politicians alike. In 2007, when presenting the WRR report called ‘Identification with the Netherlands’ (Identificatie met Nederland), Princess Máxima began by enlisting hospitality, sobriety and pragmatism as characteristics of the Dutch, only to declare that “the Dutchman does not exist” ('de' Nederlander bestaat niet). She was referring to the idea that the Netherlands thrives on embracing diversity, but the backlash against her choice of words came swiftly (Vogelaar neemt het op voor Máxima, 2007; van der Veer, 2007). Perhaps one of the most deep-seated givens about Dutch civic society is that it is defined by egalitarianism, a form of ‘horizontal individualism’ that at the same time emphasizes both individual autonomy and equality (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk & Gelfand, 1995). This assumption can be defended, at least in the socio-economic spectrum, by figures from the OECD’s Income Distribution Database (IDD) (OECD, 2015). As shown by the income inequality indicator (Figure 1), the Netherlands ranks eleventh (Gini coefficient: 0.281) amongst thirty-one countries, including the neighboring countries of Germany and France. The Gini coefficient measures the stretch to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure amongst individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution (World Bank, 2015). These indicators, thus, show relatively small economic gaps within Dutch society.   22   Moreover, the type of nationalism embraced by the Dutch is cemented on “determination of national interests through [multilateral, legalistic and moralistic] consensus” (Hoebink, 2009, p. 192). Dutch nationalism is based on political institutions, or ‘middle powers’ that differ, in the views of Hoebink (2009), from the interventionist Fig 1. Income inequality indicator 2012. This graphic shows the Netherlands (red column) as one of countries with lowest income disparity in terms of the Gini coefficient on income distribution (OECD, 2015). and imperial powers of states such as the U.S. and Great Britain. The author further asserts that the reflection of Dutch national identity on the country’s policies is founded on “the Christian-democratic and social-democratic tradition of the welfare state” (Hoebink, 2009, p. 193). The accounts of foreign visitors of the Dutch as tolerant and freedom-loving serve as one of the oldest sources on Dutch identity, dating back to the second half of the seventeenth century (van Ginkel, 1997 in: Hoebink, 2009). However, while positive stereotypes about Dutch people exist in the minds of foreigners, e.g. describing the Dutch as sober, egalitarian and clean, they exist alongside less favorable traits, such as egotistical and blunt. Even so, Hoebink (2009) concludes that Dutch national identity is not fixed, but rather fluctuates on a sliding scale where the Dutch are currently best   23  depicted as “more tolerant liberals than sticklers for orthodoxy” (p. 197). Beyond this ideal scenario, however, one must tread on the notions of cultural qualities, and the attitudes that surge thereof, with caution. Siebers and Dennissen (2015) talk about the ills of wielding Dutch cultural superiority as the means to exclude ethnic minorities. Specifically, the authors conducted a series of interviews amongst Dutch Moroccan Muslims who recounted their lived experiences of discrimination in the workplace. A majority of these interviewees declared being the target of cultural essentialism from their colleagues as a result of the negative portrayal of Muslims and Moroccan immigrants invoked by the media and far-right politicians (Siebers & Dennissen, 2015). The study steers away from the concept of cultural racism and instead elaborates on cultural essentialism and cultural fundamentalism. The former concept is a “system of belief grounded in a conception of human beings as ‘cultural’ (and under certain conditions territorial and national) subjects, i.e. bearers of a culture, located within a boundaried world, which defines them and differentiates them from others” (Grillo, 2003, p. 158). Cultural fundamentalism, on the other hand, is defined as the emphasis on differences of cultural heritage that fuel the contemporary anti-immigrant vitriol (Stolcke, 1995). In the labor market, as Siebers and Dennissen’s (2015) study illustrates, employees of an immigrant background are often prey to the culture-based justifications for exclusion and oppression (Siebers & Dennissen, 2015). In addition, Siebers and Dennissen (2015) state: “these connotations are perceived as part of an homogenizing idea of Islam and Moroccan culture and therefore represent the overall incompatibility of Islam and Moroccan backgrounds with what is supposed to be Dutch culture” (p. 13). Indeed, cultural fundamentalism is based on the argument of incompatibility of foreign “polluted qualities” (Alexander, 2013, p. 538) with Dutch mainstream values. The collective internalization of these values serves to brighten the social boundaries (Bail, 2008) that are imposed through civic integration policies (e.g. naturalization tests, integration courses) as preconditions for citizenship. In the words of Van Houdt, Suvarierol and Schinkel (2011), the values professed in the Dutch mainstream are embedded in the political discourses of neoliberalism and Christian- democratic communitarianism, which discern the good, participative citizen from the   24  bad, incompliant immigrant. Conversely, other values are drawn from progressive liberal and social-democratic traditions such as tolerance, equal rights for homosexuals, sexual freedom, and gender equality (cf. Duyvendak, 2011 in: Siebers & Dennissen, 2015). Citizenship tests eloquently exemplify the main provisions of civic integration in the Netherlands. According to Alexander (2013), these tests expect newcomers to answer questions regarding homosexuality, nudism, women’s dress codes and atheism. It is true that Dutch nationhood is presumed, as stated by Guiraudon (2005), to be built on the recognition of diversity in society. However, the Dutch politics of citizenship highlighted above hint at the fact that certain diversities are more tolerable than others. In fact, the basic preconditions of diversity are put to the test by the ‘territorial trap’ that shapes national collective identities as homogeneous, so that “territory and exclusiveness become ‘natural’ constituents of cultures” (Paasi, 2003, p. 11). It has already been established, that since the 1990’s, Dutch civic integration policies have advocated for the individual responsibility of immigrants to become full- fledged members of society (Joppke, 2004; Schinkel, 2010). Notwithstanding, empirical evidence shows that, on occasions, the native Dutch majority does not apply the same stress on the individual when interacting with members of immigrant ethnic minorities. One testimony from a 38 year-old first-generation immigrant in Siebers and Dennissen (2015) casts light on the stereotyping of Moroccans as terrorists caused by reports in the media. The informant in question declared that she noticed how Moroccan immigrants were judged en masse, as she was constantly asked by her colleagues to answer for terror acts committed by other members of her ethnic group. Public figures such as the late Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders, the so-called “neopatriots” (Lechner, 2008 in: Hoebink, 2009, p. 196), have ascribed the definition of Dutch identity to the progressive values mentioned above by juxtaposing them with the primitive cultural ideology of Islam. “Upholding progressive values, they justify intolerance towards Muslims because Muslims are portrayed as enemies of tolerance” (Siebers & Dennissen, 2015, p.8). When confronted by the public for their incendiarism, the neopatriots justify themselves under the auspices of freedom of speech, another example of the egalitarian rights cherished by the Dutch.   25  2.3.3. Inter-ethnic contact in the Netherlands When it comes to the empirical evidence of inter-ethnic contact in the Netherlands, assimilation is understood as the essential buttress of this type of interaction. In light of this assumption, a study by Martinovic, van Tubergen and Maas (2009) provides a dynamic analysis of the characteristics of immigrants and their propensity to come into contact with the native majority during their leisure time. The authors depart from previous conclusions that: “the occurrence of interethnic contact between [ethnic minorities] and the native population is scarce—for example, about 33 and 44 per cent of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants report not having any contact with Dutch in their free time” (Martinovic et al., 2009, p. 304). Homophily, the principle on which Martinovic et al. (2009) base their hypotheses, suggests that “contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people” (McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001, p. 416), which accounts for the formation of niches and homogenous social networks in society. Besides preference, the ‘opportunities’ principle affirms that, subject to the presence of out-group members, inter-ethnic contact is thought to increase by providing the native population with chances of meeting members of these out-groups. Likewise, for members of the out-group, “the lower the concentration of immigrants in an area, the more opportunity there is to interact with natives” (Martinovic et al., 2009, p. 306). Martinovic, et al. (2009) also hypothesized that, since time-constant characteristics of Surinamese and Antillean immigrants prior to migration are more similar to Dutch culture (e.g. religious background), it would be more likely for them to engage in inter-ethnic contact, vis-à-vis Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. Additionally, time-varying characteristics such as the education pursued in the host country raise the likelihood of establishing contacts with the native population, partly because: “immigrants who go to school or university in the Netherlands learn in class about Dutch culture, which might make them accept Dutch customs and values, and therefore also prefer interaction with natives” (Martinovic et al., 2009, p. 306). The results of the study confirm the prediction that, “looking at the total scores for separate ethnic groups, compared to Turks and Moroccans, a larger proportion of Surinamese and Antilleans report having contact with [native] Dutch [people] (32 per cent versus 57 per cent)” (Martinovic et al., 2009, p. 309-310). The conclusion thereof is that the preferences for   26  inter-ethnic contact are stronger in Surinamese and Antillean immigrants, compared to the other ethnic groups, due to their ethnic background and their previous exposure to Dutch culture. A solid contribution of Martinovic et al. (2009) is that the causal relationship between preference for intergroup contact and attributes such as educational attainment and native language acquisition seems to move in both directions, and is dependent on time variability. On this subject, native language fluency can both emerge from inter- ethnic contact, and be a determining factor for it. The study’s main deficiencies are nonetheless crucial for developing novel pathways to understanding intergroup contact. The data was restricted to first-generation immigrants, namely those who were born outside of the Netherlands. This constrained the effects of generational change, which have been documented before in analyses on the educational leaps made by children of immigrant parents (cf. Rijkschroeff, ten Dam, Duyvendak, Gruijter and Pels, 2005). Furthermore the data pertains to 17 Dutch towns where the immigrant population is most highly concentrated. One of the study’s expectations was that immigrants living in more concentrated areas would forge less inter-ethnic relationships, but although the results confirm this, they are not generalizable to other regions in the Netherlands where the presence of immigrant groups is smaller. Boschman (2012) finds that living in one of the four largest cities in the Netherlands, also known as the “G4”, which have a relatively low percentage of Dutch inhabitants at the city level, has a negative effect on contact with native Dutch people” (p. 361). What she calls the ‘city effect’ shows that people from immigrant minority groups from outside the G4 have 1.5 times higher chance of coming into contact with native Dutch people (Boschman, 2012). In view of these effects, all respondents of the surveys used by Martinovic et al. (2009) are predetermined by their residential location to show lower degrees of inter-ethnic contact. Another flaw of the study is the fact that there is no measurement to attest the perception of discriminatory attitudes amongst the respondents. One related criticism is that, by using the survey data called ‘Social Position and Use of Facilities by Ethnic Minorities’ (SPVA), Martinovic et al., (2009) limit the scope of their study to the perceptions of the four major non-western immigrant groups, and ignore the native population’s views regarding these out-groups. This omission is not exclusive to the cited   27  publication. Bourhis et al. (1997) argue that scholars in the past have been oblivious to the bidirectional change caused by the acculturation process (cf. Gordon, 1964; Glazer & Moynihan, 1970 in: Bourhis et al., 1997). In this regard, Bourhis et al. (1997) proposed the Interactive acculturation model (IAM) to reveal the connections between the attitudes of the host majority with the attitudes of immigrant ethnic minorities. The authors’ goal was not only to support the notion that state integration policies have an impact on the acculturation orientations of the host society’s dominant group, but also to measure this group’s willingness to interact with culturally-dissimilar others, by way of their host community acculturation scale (HCAS), which contained questions about their opinion on the cultural maintenance and/or assimilation of immigrants (Bourhis et al., 1997). 2.3.4. Views on integration and segregation of immigrant ethnic minorities in the Netherlands The degree of successful integration of ethnic immigrant minorities in the Netherlands is observable through the different domains of public life, and some research (van Tubergen, 2015), has attempted to measure it by the level of inter-ethnic contact that occurs outside of these domains. For these public domains, I will focus primarily on spatial and school segregation, the former being an assumed predictor of the latter. Musterd and Ostendorf (2007) addressed the relationship between spatial segregation and integration in the Netherlands by outlining two main contrasting visions on how cities are to accommodate foreign newcomers. The first vision sees the influx of immigrants as “[contributing] to the functions of the city as a center of innovation, knowledge production and cultural exchange” (p. 42). This vision thus regards immigration as an asset rather than a problem. The authors suggest that the development of urban economies “is characterized not just by expanding business quarters that accommodate large multinationals and their international employees, but also by newer and smaller firms in internationally-oriented cultural and creative industries” (2007, p. 43). In sum, the first vision positively sees “the other” as an important factor for attracting talented and highly educated people, who in turn contribute to the expansion of the economy of the city in question.   28   Conversely, the second vision is marked by expressions of rejection toward immigrants who originate from lower socio-economic areas of the world (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2007). Fears of criminality and polarization contribute to the problematization of the presence of immigrants in urban areas, and residential segregation of ethnic minorities is believed to have negative repercussions on the social mobility of these groups. In the Netherlands, spatial segregation became a topic of discussion in political debates as soon as it became clear that the labor migrants who entered the country had decided to stay. However, during the first stages of immigration, a so-called “multicultural model of cohabitation” (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2007, p. 44), favoring cultural maintenance, resulted in the concentration of labor migrants in secluded areas where they were allowed to adhere to their own cultural norms and interests. The failed integration of these migrants, and the subsequent negative views on spatial segregation and ethnic concentration led, in the 1990’s, to policies aimed at stimulating mixed neighborhoods (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2007). Based on empirical data focusing on the four main immigrant ethnic minority groups, Musterd and Ostendorf (2007) found that segregation levels in the three largest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague) are currently moderate or average, by European standards. Analyzing anti-Muslim attitudes in the Netherlands, Savelkoul et al. (2010) discovered that amongst immigrant ethnic minorities, it is the relatively liberal and better educated individuals who are more likely to seek intergroup contact with the native Dutch group. Another study (van Tubergen, 2015) provides evidence that ethnic closure in core discussion networks, i.e. intimate relationships, is higher (75% from the sample) amongst people with less Dutch language proficiency and stronger religious beliefs. Needless to say, segregation between the four main groups varies according to the year of entry and type of immigration, and other factors such as the duration of stay. For instance, one main difference drawn from the authors’ findings is that, since 2001, unlike Surinamese and Antillean residents, there has been an increased concentration of both Turkish and Moroccan migrants in the ethnic concentration areas of the previously mentioned cities. Musterd and Ostendorf (2007) suggest that this trend might be related to the more explicit public debate regarding fundamentalism and Islam, which grew in intensity around that same year which might have boosted separation strategies of   29  minority groups of Muslim background. Separation, in this context, might be triggered by “protective solidarity” (Alexander, 2013, p. 534). This strategy relates to “individuals [who] place a value on holding on to their original culture, and at the same time wish to avoid interaction with others” (Berry, 1997, p. 9), and it can also arise from negative attitudes from the native majority. Indeed, the proportion of these groups living in their own ethnic concentrations was the highest, both for Moroccan migrants (45%) and for Turkish migrants (39%). Musterd and Ostendorf (2007), however, challenge previous assumptions that ethnic concentration in neighborhoods creates a hurdle for integration. In their opinion, more intergroup mixing does not equal more intergroup contact, and in any event, the effects of this type of contact on integration remain unclear. Thus, apart from residential segregation, a focal point remains the lack of leisure contact between the native Dutch majority and ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. A study conducted by Boschman (2012) contends that neighborhood composition has little effect on the preferences of ethnic minority individuals regarding their leisure activities. “The fact that they have leisure contact with Dutch people is not due to the large share of Dutch inhabitants in their neighborhood, but is caused by their personal characteristics” (Boschman, 2012, p. 365). Martinovic et al. (2009) refer to this causal factor as ‘preference’, stating that social interaction is best predicted by cultural similarity. Presently, a number of scholars including Musterd and Ostendorf (2007) argue that Moroccan, Turkish, Surinamese, and Antillean ethnic groups have less contact with the native Dutch population, especially when living in highly concentrated areas, namely areas where the ethnic minority population is high. Whether or not spatial segregation is a direct sign of a hampered integration, the positive relationship between more social contact with the native Dutch and better integration indicators (e.g. Dutch language acquisition), has gathered considerable scholarly support (Martinovic et al., 2009; Vervoort and Dagevos, 2011). In this regard, it is worth mentioning that the ‘Dutch only’ language policy that is prevalent in primary education institutions throughout the country constitutes a clear example of the assimilationist shift in the integration policies of the Netherlands. This policy, as stated by Kroon and Spotti (2011), reinforces the prevailing position of Dutch as the exclusive language of instruction, as opposed to other   30  substandard languages, i.e. immigrant languages. Indeed, language has become one of the most debated cultural instruments of integration, and in the following section, I will elaborate on the wider approaches to education regarding ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. 2.4. Immigrant ethnic minority pupils in Dutch education 2.4.1. Policy efforts toward equal opportunities in education Before entering the topics of school choice and school segregation in the Netherlands, I will map out the main considerations about Dutch primary education. In the Netherlands, full time education is mandatory from the age of 5 until the age of 16. Primary education is identical for all pupils and spans over eight years, while the pupils enter secondary education at the age of 12 (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005, p. 420). Regarding the Dutch educational policy on immigrant ethnic minorities, Rijkschroeff et al. (2005) distinguish between three main dimensions: (1) the socio-economic dimension, (2) the emancipatory dimension, and (3) the sociocultural dimension. The first dimension relates to combating educational disadvantage, and its course of action was first delineated in the 1974 ‘Policy for the education of disadvantaged communities’ (Beleidsplan voor het onderwijs aan groepen in achterstandssituaties), as creating separate category-based facilities for foreign workers’ children and their parents. The attention to these types of children led to a general policy for disadvantaged pupils and the formulation of the weighting system (Gewichtenregeling), which will be explained in further detail in the methodology section of this study. This system procured additional facilities for schools with ethnic minority pupils who needed individual attention, particularly in regards to the acquisition of the Dutch language. In 1985, a new policy of decentralization left the implementation of educational policies up to the municipalities. It is worth mentioning that, in concordance with the general approach of Dutch policies on immigrant ethnic minorities, the focus of educational policy started to move in the direction of individual rather than collective integration in the mid 1980’s. Irrespective of this shift, the core objective of the educational policies remained the same; reducing educational disadvantage by securing an educational attainment of ethnic   31  minority pupils comparable to native majority pupils with the same age, gender, and SES characteristics (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). The emancipatory dimension, as the name suggests, relates to the policy goals of creating conditions for a diverse society in which equal rights, freedoms and opportunities are guaranteed to all people, irrespective of their ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or other characteristic (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau & Centraal Bureau voor de Statistick, 2002, in: Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). Finally, the sociocultural dimension reveals the category-specific approach aimed at ensuring the teaching of language and culture of the immigrant pupils’ countries of origin. Earlier stages of educational policy related to the promotion of acculturation as a multilateral process of “learning from, accepting and appreciating each other, and of being open to each other’s culture or elements of it” (Ministerie van OCW, 1974, p. 6 in: Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). Although the period from the 1970s to the mid-1980s emphasized the importance of cultural maintenance as the vehicle for a positive self-image, the succeeding policies left this cultural element behind. As noted by (Kroon & Spotti, 2011), this shift signified that immigrant ethnic minority language and culture were no longer legitimized for their own intrinsic value, but as instruments for combating socio-economic disadvantage. The current assimilationist trend sees a negative connection between cultural maintenance and socio-economic development (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). The conclusions of the previously-cited study is that the Dutch government has been consistent only in the socio- economic dimension of its policy aims, with the clear intended outcome of achieving proportional participation of ethnic minority pupils in education. In contrast, the sociocultural dimension of educational policies has undergone several changes over the past 30 years with no explicit outcomes in sight. In their study, Rijkschroeff et al. (2005) observe that the latest results concerning the educational position of ethnic minorities confirm that the socio-economic policy objectives have been met. According to the authors, compared to native Dutch pupils, Turkish, Moroccan and Antillean children still lag two years behind in the Dutch language upon completion of primary education. This can be interpreted as a predictor of the relatively low proportion of these ethnic groups in secondary and higher education programs. However, this proportion is growing (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). The findings   32  of the SPVA database (Social Position and Use of Facilities by Members of Ethnic Minorities) seem to confirm a positive generational change in educational achievement. Van der Laan and Veenman (2004 in: Rijkschroeff et al., 2005) used this data to test whether second-generation immigrants from ages 15 to 30 years have achieved proportionality in education. After controlling for background characteristics, they found that, as of 2002, Moroccan second-generation youngsters have achieved unsuspected educational levels (Van der Laan & Veenman, 2004). In conclusion, Rijkschroeff et al. (2005) declare that education is key in battling disadvantage, although it remains unclear whether the implemented policies are the sole contributors to the educational achievements of immigrant ethnic minority pupils or whether other factors, such as the pupils’ own efforts, are more influential in this sense. In any event, equal education levels do not guarantee equal job opportunities for ethnic minority members due to discrimination. This remains an obstacle for higher income and better housing opportunities (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). Meijnen (2003, in: Rijkschroeff et al., 2005) considers that the socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds must not be confounded when investigating education results, and the latter should not be held as a determinant for academic disadvantage. It might seem self-evident, but one can argue under this premise that an emphasis on education is only successful in bridging inequality when paired with the appropriate labor market opportunities for these pupils in the future. 2.4.2. School choice and school segregation in the Netherlands In the Netherlands, ethnic segregation in primary schools has remained a key political issue for the past 15 years (Karsten, Felix, Ledoux, Meijnen, Roeleveld & van Schooten, 2006). At present, the country’s levels of segregation of this kind are relatively high (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2009). In many Dutch cities, the location of elite schools within high-end residential areas poses as a precursor of segregation (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2009). Furthermore, since the 1990’s, studies have been conducted to assess the influence that parental choice may have on this phenomenon. Apart from residential segregation, Karsten et al. (2006), found that parental choice, and the gate-keeping practices of school directors are the main causes of ethnic segregation in primary schools. The authors provide a well-documented review of this influence. They conclude that the ethnic   33  composition of the school plays a role in the parents’ motives and mechanisms involved in their school choice (Karsten et al., 2006), and more parents of children enrolled at white schools are willing to commute farther distances to the school than parents with children at black schools. In regards to freedom of school choice, the Netherlands offers a unique context for analysis. Unlike countries that have adopted freedom of school choice more recently, such as the U.S., England, France and New Zealand (Karsten et al., 2006), the Netherlands has a century-old tradition of allowing parents to choose primary schools freely. Despite this, school segregation is a phenomenon that affects the abovementioned countries as well. Bifulco and Ladd (2007), for instance, observe that the charter school system in the U.S., implemented in 1997, has heightened the racial isolation of black and white students, and has simultaneously lowered the test scores of black pupils in the state of North Carolina. Schools within this system are run by independent non-profit corporations and must be approved by the board of education of each individual state. In the U.S., where race and socio-economic standing are closely intertwined, white families tend to prefer predominantly white schools, i.e. schools with a black population of less than 20%, when transferring their children to charter schools (Bifulco & Ladd, 2007). In this respect, it should be mentioned that Ladd et al. (2010) have found the levels of segregation in Dutch schools to be comparatively higher than the levels in the U.S. According to their findings, “the average enrollment-weighted racial isolation of black students was 0.46, which is far below the comparable measure of immigrant isolation of 0.70 in the big Dutch cities” (Ladd et al., 2010, p.23). It is therefore important to discuss the main characteristics of the Dutch education system, so as to elucidate the various factors of ethnic school segregation. As highlighted by Ladd et al. (2010), Article 23 of the Dutch Constitution of 1917 stipulates the right of citizens to establish their own schools via public funding, irrespective of religious orientation or educational philosophy. This results in a very limited differentiation of fees between schools (Boterman, 2012). In exchange for public funding, all schools in the Netherlands must comply with the Dutch Inspectorate of Education (Inspective van het Onderwijs) and “are subject to the same general national curriculum guidelines and national teacher salary schedules” (Ladd et al., 2010, p. 7).   34  Ladd et al. (2010) point out that, even though Article 23 explicitly only applies to the right to form new schools, it has also been interpreted as the right of parents to enroll their children in a school of their choosing. However, Ritzen, van Dommelen and de Vijlder (1997) argue that until the 1960’s, parents rarely visualized freedom of school choice as a “consumer choice”, (i.e. the evaluation of schools based on their quality and reputation), since prior to that time, children used to attend the schools matching their parents’ religious beliefs. This resulted in “[the] integration rather than segregation of social classes: Catholic children from the lower strata went to the same schools as Catholic élite children” (Ritzen et al. 1997, p. 331). In this regard, Ritzen et al. (1997) consider the secularization of Dutch society that began in the 1960’s, and the large influx of immigration taking place around that time, as causes of the increasing segregation in Dutch schools. As a confirmation of the former, Ritzen et al. (1997) assert that: “between 1958 and 1993, the percentage of 21-70-yr-olds not attached to any Church increased from around 25% to 60%” (p. 332). Another unique aspect of the Dutch education system is that, due to the equal allocation of public funding to both public and private schools, 70% of the country’s primary student population attends private schools administered by autonomous school boards with specific religious orientations or educational philosophies (Ladd et al., 2010). Although these figures seem contradictory to the abovementioned secular trends, they are but a remnant of the Dutch pillarization system. Until the early 1950’s, this system organized Dutch society in “pillars” according to religious affiliation (i.e. Protestant, Roman Catholic and secular). Presently, however, Catholic or Protestant schools no longer cater to pupils of only these denominations, as demonstrated by the 29% of Protestants and 23% of Catholics attending either a secular school or a school of a different religion than their own (Denessen, Driessen & Sleegers, 2005). With this in mind, it is safe to assume that religious beliefs have taken a secondary role in the process of school choice for parents and pupils of Protestant and Catholic backgrounds. In regards to school choice, Karsten et al. (2006) state that the ethnic preferences of native Dutch families when choosing schools are never explicit. The authors argue that parents without a religious background or a preference for a specific educational philosophy select the local school whose pupil population matches their ethnic   35  background instead. These parents, however, often deny these claims when asked directly (Karsten et al., 2006). Other studies appear to be successful in circumventing this issue. As an example, Boterman (2012) presented a series of school choice strategies of middle- class native Dutch parents in Amsterdam, where the fundamental argument for rejecting ethnically diverse schools was the quality of such schools, even when most respondents mentioned that ethnic diversity in schools was desirable. The study is particularly enlightening, as it draws a comparison between the parents’ adherence to the cosmopolitan values of multiculturalism and diversity as a form of symbolic capital, and their avoidance of ethnically heterogeneous schools. The most popular strategy amongst these parents was “[m]oving to (or staying in) a neighbourhood within Amsterdam with a less diverse population in both the neighbourhood and school” (n=11) (Boterman, 2007, p. 1140). In their study, Karsten et al. (2006), collected data from surveys administered to 931 parents of pupils enrolled at 37 schools in 11 districts with both black and white schools. The findings show that, for native Dutch parents, the “match” between home and school was the most important factor for choosing a school, whereas, for ethnic minority parents, the degree of differentiation, i.e. sufficient attention to children with academic lags, and the academic standard of the school, were more important (Karsten et al., 2006). The concept of social matching as applied to school choice has been previously investigated (Glazerman, 1998). Glazerman defined this behavior as dominant in the school choice process, arguing that “choosers select schools to be with classmates who are like themselves in terms of race, ethnicity, or social class” (1998, p. 3). As for determining what is an ‘unsuitable’ school for native and non-native parents, Karsten et al. (2006) reported a high percentage (60.3%) of native Dutch respondents who considered black schools in their vicinity to be “completely unsuitable” for their children (p. 464). The main reasons for determining that a school was ‘unsuitable’ was a perceived mismatch between home and school in connection with characteristics such as culture, religious beliefs and social milieu (Karsten et al., 2006). This factor played a more important role for native Dutch parents than for Turkish and Moroccan parents, whose main reasons for avoiding schools were the curriculum and   36  facilities of the school, and its low degree of differentiation, especially in the Dutch language (Karsten et al., 2006). As shown in the extensive literature on school segregation, there are several challenges faced by black schools in the Netherlands. Many pupils of immigrant backgrounds come from households with very poor educational attainment, an issue that the previously mentioned Dutch weighting system tries to tackle. A study by Herweijer (2009) on behalf of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) revealed that the parents of only 10-15% of pupils of Turkish and Moroccan origin have completed a secondary education or higher (Herweijer, 2009). Furthermore, the percentages of parents of pupils who had only reached an elementary education oscillated between 77% and 60% for Moroccan and Turkish pupils respectively, compared to only 3% of native Dutch pupils in the same socio-economic situation (Hulsen & Uerz, 2002 in: Rijkschroeffet al., 2005). Interestingly, these figures often lead to the erroneous notion that immigrant parents do not consider education to be important. De Rycke and Swyngendouw (1999) found the opposite. In a study conducted in Flanders, they discovered that Turkish and Moroccan, as well as unskilled Belgian parents considered education as the vehicle for social mobility and integration. These parents’ perceptions of the importance of education underpin the expectations that their children will attain higher educational levels than themselves. “The purpose of migration, after all, is to improve one's position [and] if migration fails to achieve this, immigrants transfer their hopes to their children” (de Rycke & Swyngendouw, 1999, p. 276). These expectations, nevertheless, stem from the language constraints of those parents, which limit their access to the information regarding the education system and the school choice process, as evidenced by De Rycke and Swyngendouw (1999). Moreover, the avoidance motive, namely the preference of school choice based on the low presence of immigrants was visible amongst Belgian parents, but surprisingly enough, amongst the other immigrant groups as well. Indeed, about two thirds of Turkish and Moroccan respondents expressed their strong opposition to concentration schools (i.e. schools with high percentages of immigrant pupils) as they considered these schools to be of a lower quality (de Rycke & Swyngendouw, 1999). The final conclusion from this study is that, contrary to the common belief, immigrant parents   37  prefer schools with lower percentages of immigrant pupils, and this preference coincides with their high regard for education. Conversely, the idea that white parents select schools according to the school’s academic performance has also been contested in the past (Glazerman, 1998). In his study, Glazerman found that the majority of participants from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, and of whom 68% were categorized as ‘white’, based their school choice on ethnicity, SES and distance to the school. Test scores, the study reads, were only deemed important by parents whose closest school options had a relatively low academic performance (Glazerman, 1998). The bad reputation of black schools in the Netherlands has received considerable attention from the media as well as from scholars. Dronkers and van der Velden (2013) published one of the most controversial (Huijgen & Petrany, 2010) studies on the effects of the ethnic composition of schools. Their research claimed that the more ethnically diverse a school, the lower the educational achievement (Dronkers & van der Velden, 2013). As resounding as these findings were in the media, this study, based on cross- national data from the Program for International Student Assessment [PISA] tests, did not include the Netherlands, focusing instead on other OECD countries (Dronkers & van der Velden, 2013). Moreover, the bad reputation of black schools is also linked to ideas about integration. Ladd et al. (2010) argue that the prominence of immigration, Islam, and integration in the media has become a major catalyst for elevating the topic of segregation to political concerns. The authors state that the political debate has been characterized by fierce opposition to Islamic schools, regarded by their detractors as divisive and undermining of Dutch democratic values (Driessen and Merry, 2006 in: Ladd et al., 2010). As Savelkoul et al. (2010) point out, past research has not thoroughly explored the determinants of negative attitudes towards Muslims in the Netherlands, and it is yet to elucidate the relationship between these determinants and white flight in Dutch primary education. Ladd et al. (2010) sustain that policy makers in the Netherlands have recently addressed school segregation as a problem. Suggesting that segregated schools are counterproductive for integration of immigrant ethnic minority groups, the indexes developed by Ladd et al. (2010) imply that “typical disadvantaged immigrant children have relatively few native Dutch speaking schoolmates, a situation that could make it   38  difficult for them to develop their Dutch language skills” (p. 22). Other researchers (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2007) are less critical of ethnic school segregation and argue that there is no scientific evidence that black schools are a threat to integration or affect the academic performance of their pupils. Musterd and Ostendorf (2007) seem to agree with the idea that the focus of desegregation strategies has to be on socio-economic rather than ethnic differences, but having mentioned the original purposes of migration of these ethnic minorities (i.e. low-skilled labor and family reunification), and the growing discrimination in the labor market (Siebers, 2009; Siebers & Dennissen, 2015), these two dimensions remain correlated. In conclusion, it is important to stress the implications of the unique Dutch context in regards to school segregation. As we have seen, school choice in the Netherlands is in line with the libertarian traditions espoused by the Dutch Constitution, and has become a default mechanism for avoiding contact with out-groups, especially when their distinctiveness relies on ethnic background. Thus, in accordance with the conclusion of Ladd et al. (2010), desegregation in schools can only be achieved by resorting to the polder model of decision-making, or in other words, “engaging in discussions in which all the relevant groups have an opportunity to have their say and, over time, coming to a consensus about what needs to be done on a voluntary basis” (p. 29). 2.5. Summary and research questions In order to summarize the literature reviewed in this chapter I will start by mentioning the peculiarities of the Netherlands as a country of destination for migrants. As we have seen, the process of decolonization and the postwar labor migration programs have a strong influence on the ethnic composition of the country. The four main immigrant ethnic minority groups have struggled to integrate into Dutch society as a result of the principles of civic integration that have dominated the policy efforts of the last three decades. The ethnic minorities, especially Turkish and Moroccan, have been defined as problematic in the official discourse of the government and policy advisors alike, as well as by opinions in the media. The discourse on immigration, as previously demonstrated (Alexander, 2013; Bouras, 2013), is exerted as a top-down process where minority   39  reports and scholarly articles give rise to more restrictive language policies, stricter entry requirements for newcomers, and to the overarching categorization of these four ethnic minorities as economically disadvantaged. The early policies of the 1970’s, favoring cultural maintenance of immigrant groups, are no longer in place. Thus, the main preconditions for civic integration have moved from the group to the individual, and are now interrelated with ideas about nationhood and belonging (Paasi, 2003). The most salient means of differentiation in the Netherlands are nowadays based on religious affiliation, language proficiency, and compliance with Dutch values and norms. The shifts within the Dutch integration ideologies reflect the current anxiety over the retention of those values and traditions that are perceived as conflicting with the Dutch egalitarian worldview. Segregation is deemed undesirable in every public domain, but the lack of integration has been regarded as a failed compromise on the part of immigrants themselves. Even though the Netherlands is typified as a country welcoming to migrants, resting on a tradition of individual liberty and collective solidarity, these traits are often used to fence off the ethnic groups that withhold ‘incompatible’ values and norms. I have opined that the boundary-making processes outlined above are accountable for the growing segregation levels in primary schools. Furthermore, I have shed light on the fact that cultural essentialist attitudes of the native majority group against ethnic out- groups in the Netherlands reinforce these boundaries and thus limit inter-ethnic contact. The example of school segregation helps to define this country’s current social and institutional status of intergroup contact. Without alluding to the old notions of racial superiority, new dichotomies have emerged as distinctions between in-groups and out- groups in the context of ethnically diverse societies, such as the one in question. To this, I add that school segregation is a byproduct not only of the distinctive Dutch education system and school choice processes, but also of the resilient inequalities in other domains, such as housing and labor market opportunities. Having reviewed the main reasons for Dutch parents to choose white schools over black ones, my research questions are the following: RQ1: What are the main attributes that parents living in middle-sized cities (i.e. Eindhoven and Tilburg) look for when choosing primary schools?   40  RQ2: What are the perceptions of these parents about the ethnic composition of the Netherlands and the main immigrant ethnic minorities, and how do these perceptions affect their preference or avoidance for intergroup contact? RQ3: What are the main dichotomies deployed by parents as group boundaries for rationalizing their school choice processes? RQ4: How consistent are the white school parents’ perceptions of ethnic diversity in the Netherlands with their perceptions on the ethnic composition of schools?   41   3. Methodology section 3.1. Design of the study The present study consists of a qualitative empirical-interpretive analysis using interview transcripts. In their introduction to the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Denzin and Lincoln state that qualitative research puts “emphasis on the qualities of entities, what cannot be measured in terms of quantity, amount, intensity or frequency” (2005, p.10). This emphasis is placed on how social reality is constructed. A “field of inquiry in its own right” (2005, p. 10), qualitative research is ramified into a varied and complex series of strategies for investigating cultural and societal processes. This type of research is thus aimed at describing the subjects of observation from an interpretive perspective, and trying to break down all the elements that enrich the lives, goals and norms of the subject(s) of study. In this study, data collection consisted of interviews, conducted amongst parents with children belonging to the relevant age group (four to twelve), and enrolled in primary education institutions that were not located within their residential environment. In these interviews, participants gave detailed descriptions about the rationale behind their school choice processes in their selection for elementary schools. Thus, the interviews were not only aimed at elucidating the preferences for specific types of schools over others, but also the influence of the ethnic composition and intergroup relations of the informants in this decision-making process. Afterward, the interview transcripts were coded in adherence to the grounded theory methodology first proposed by Glaser and Strauss (1967). 3.2. Procedure The interviews were conducted in cooperation with a Dutch-speaking interviewer. This proved to be the only feasible method of conducting in-depth interviews with Dutch participants who were not proficient in English. Morse (2010) notes that while researchers deem it compulsory for participants to speak whatever language the researcher is working in, “this is not essential, for some research must be conducted using   42  translators” (p. 231). In this case, the fellow interviewer took over translating duties when necessary, although most interviews were successfully held in English. Before proceeding with the interviews, it was crucial to delimit the field of the study. In this regard, the research was focused on the cities of Eindhoven and Tilburg. In their article on the backlash of parental choice and school autonomy in the Netherlands, Ladd et al. (2010) investigated the segregation levels of 32 middle-sized cities, including Eindhoven and Tilburg. According to their segregation index, these middle-sized cities exhibit comparatively high and rising levels of school segregation (Ladd et al., 2010). To wit, between 1997 and 2005 “the average proportions of disadvantaged immigrant pupils in schools where more than 50 percent or more than 70 percent of students were like themselves increased in both cases by more than 20 percent” (2009, p. 25). It seemed, from this study, that school segregation was a pressing issue in these two cities as much as in more ethnically concentrated areas of the Netherlands. Before embarking on the data collection it was necessary to identify the schools in Eindhoven and Tilburg where the proportion of Dutch autochtoon pupils is high. Schools in Eindhoven were selected according to the findings drawn from the latest research report by Hogervorst (2013) on the ethnic composition of primary education institutions in the city. In this publication, Hogervorst (2013) presented a classification of schools based on their percentages of pupils of non-western ancestry. He divided these schools in the following categories: black schools (70-100%), concentrated schools (50-70%), mixed schools (20-50%) and white schools (0-20%). A total of 25 schools appearing under the “white” category were then chosen and contacted by email for participation in the study. For the schools in Tilburg, the selection criterion was different due to the lack of information about the ethnic composition of schools in the city. As a review on cohort studies regarding educational achievement shows (Guiraudon, 2005), socio-economic origin and ethnic background often overlap. In order to tackle disadvantage, the national weighting system (Gewichtenregeling) seeks to allocate additional funding to schools with children whose parents have low levels of educational attainment. The weighting system has modified its criteria over time since its first implementation in 1986. Currently, the system dictates that pupils whose parents or guardians have only   43  completed primary education are weighted 1.2 (Ministerie van OCW, 2013). In order to access the schools that were likely to host the lowest amount of non-western immigrant pupils, ten primary schools with the lowest proportion of pupils with weightings of 1.2 were thus shortlisted and contacted for participation. 3.3. Access One of the main obstacles in the data collection stage was gaining access to our prospective informants. Several qualitative studies warn of the role of the gatekeeper in preventing the researcher from entering the field, and recruiting the necessary informants. Wittel (2000) argues that the image of the gatekeeper is a prominent one, as it is the mediator with whom the researcher is introduced to the larger community that he/she wishes to study. This gatekeeper is often easy to identify as a figure of authority in the field. In ethnography in education, for instance, this is usually the head teacher, the principal or another staff member who oversees an entire institution or has the ability to grant the researcher access to it (see Bezemer, 2003). In the case of this study, the school administrators were, for the most part, reluctant to participate in the study for undisclosed reasons. Entry negotiation into these schools thus proved to be a very time-consuming endeavor. Out of fifteen schools contacted in Eindhoven and eleven schools contacted in Tilburg, only two and one, respectively, gave us their consent to approach the parents. It is likely that the reluctance of the administrators relates to the fact that school segregation constitutes a sensitive topic. Indeed, primary schools in the Netherlands tend to strive to promote an image of inclusiveness and understanding, and a study that may challenge this image is unlikely to be welcomed by all. Appendix 1 shows the request for participation (in Dutch) sent to the prospective schools. 3.4. Participants Once we gained access to the relevant schools, we sought the collaboration of parents indiscriminate of gender, age and ethnic background, to avoid essentialist presuppositions. As will be shown in the results section, the present research was based on the premise that white flight occurs not only amongst native Dutch parents, but also   44  amongst ethnic minority parents who consciously avoid ethnically diverse schools within their residential vicinity. The Dutch interviewer conducted site visits to the schools that agreed to participate. She met with parents on the schoolyards and asked them whether they lived in the residential area where the school was located. Parents matching the profile were selected via purposeful sampling (Morse, 2010). Morse asserts: “an excellent participant for grounded theory is one who has been through, or observed, the experience under investigation” (2010, p. 231). This excellence is based on the degrees of willingness, availability and reflexivity of our to-be informants, and they were chosen accordingly. A total of 24 individuals agreed to participate in the study; 21 parents and three school directors. 3.5. Interviews The interviews took place over a span of two months, starting on April 9th and ending on June 1st. The interviewers conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with open- ended questions with parents who fulfilled the above-mentioned criteria. Every household was interviewed separately. Each interview occurred in person, and was lengthy, ranging from 56 minutes at the shortest, to 84 at the longest. Furthermore, all but one interview was conducted at the homes of the interviewees. The exceptional case was an interview conducted at a participants’ workplace. It is worth mentioning that the reasons not to opt for a quantitative approach (e.g. surveys) in collecting the data were based on previous research conclusions. Discrepancies have been found between questionnaire responses and interviews when dealing with subjects of ethnicity and race (Bagley, 1996). Furthermore, self-reporting questionnaires might cause respondent reluctance on questions about the abovementioned subjects because they “might be interpreted by some parents as a signifier-if-ticked of their holding socially unacceptable beliefs” (Bagley, 1996, p. 578). In contrast, the same evasive behavior during interviews will elicit further interpretation rather than hinder it (Blommaert & Dong, 2010). Lastly, as Bagley suggests: “[i]t is only with the opportunity provided by in-depth interviewing and discussions about the process of choice that racial reasons influencing parental decision-making are able to surface” (1996, p. 578).   45   As the transcripts reveal, yes-or-no questions were thoroughly avoided and only used as confirmation for unclear responses. All interviews began with the protocol of requesting compliance to be recorded, and assigning an alias to the participant for anonymity purposes. Appendix 2 shows the full list of questions contained in the interviews to parents and school directors in the order that they were enunciated. Although these questions were open-ended, they were consciously chosen on the basis of the consulted literature. In a study about school choice by Denessen et al. (2005), for instance, data was drawn and analyzed from the Dutch cohort study entitled PRIMA through a parent questionnaire that “[contained] questions regarding parental background (i.e., level of education, ethnicity), religion and reasons for the choice of school for their child” (p. 353). Consequently, several introductory questions were aimed at mapping out the profile of the interviewee (education level, occupation, ethnic background, and religious affiliation). The remaining questions were designed to shed light on the theoretical concepts drawn from the literature. 3.6. Transcription of interviews Transcriptions (Appendix 3) were written in line with the conventions found in the Sample Qualitative Data Preparation and Transcription Protocol by McClellan, MacQueen and Neidig (2003). The transcription guidelines therein are appropriate for QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis), for its particular benefits in analyzing textual data. Given the fact that the transcriptions were defined as the core of the analysis, an effort was made to reproduce the answers of the respondents as literally as possible. No data reduction steps were taken between the interviews and the transcription, in order to guarantee that no information was omitted (Huberman & Miles, 1994). In consonance with the above-mentioned conventions, it was decided to maintain a verbatim account of the interviews, where observations are made to mark overlapping speech and incomplete sentences. Furthermore a faithful reproduction of the statements of the interviewees was carried out irrespective of the use of slang, mispronunciations, grammatical errors, interjections (uh, oh, huh), and non-verbal sounds (e.g. laughter), which were typed in parentheses. Conventional transcription symbols were not used, to   46  avoid confusion, and instead of adding symbols where words were not fully recognized or misheard, the legend inaudible segment was placed in parentheses. Source labeling was used to identify the origin of each question and statement based on the individual information of the interviewers and the respondents located at the heading of each transcription. These considerations were implemented so as to avoid non-uniformity in the style and appearance of our transcripts (McClellan et al., 2003). Finally, a form of triangulation, a recurring resource in qualitative research, was deployed in order to confirm or disprove the interviewees’ statements about the available schools, including the ones they chose and the ones they rejected. By triangulating the self-presented information of schools about their CITO scores, their educational philosophy, and general facts and figures with the statements from the parents, I gained further insight into the motivations behind the parents’ choice of schools. 3.7. Equipment Interviews were recorded in full, after informants gave their consent, using a built-in audio recorder of an iPhone 5s. A separate built-in recorder of a Nokia Lumia 520 smartphone was used as backup. The Internet-based software, Otranscribe, was used for transcribing. All audio files were uploaded, although it should be mentioned that a fragment from interview #6 was damaged. 3.8. Data analysis Upon conclusion of the transcriptions, the resulting text was coded according to the guidelines of grounded theory analysis of qualitative interviewing (Charmaz, 2003). These guidelines help to contextualize the findings and seek the emerging themes that can be linked to the relevant theoretical and empirical concepts found in the literature. The final step in the coding process consisted of selective coding that yielded core categories (Corbin and Strauss, 1990, p.14). The concluding element in the data analysis process was producing memos; the crucial intermediate step between the coding phase and the first draft of the analysis (Charmaz, 2003). In the memos leading up to the results reported in the next chapter, I was able to anchor the emerging categories from the codings to statements retrieved from   47  the transcripts. Memos helped to set the analysis in motion, early on in the research process, thus avoiding “becoming overwhelmed by stacks of undigested data” all at once (Charmaz, 2003, p. 323). Perhaps the most important advantage of memo writing is the establishment of linkages between the different categories, which simultaneously allows for delineation in each category’s conditions. Constituting the most spontaneous part of the analysis, the memos enabled me to refine the categories while moving forward in the coding process, and the outcome was a more detailed set of categories than the one previously envisioned while coding the first set of interviews. Charmaz (2003) writes that “after exhausting the analytic potential of categories in a memo, [the researcher] can take the memo further by relating it to relevant literatures” (p. 325). In the next chapter I will present a detailed account of the results of my analysis.   48   4. Results In this chapter I will present the results of my study. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the results were obtained from in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Subsequently, interviews were transcribed in full, and later coded based on the coding scheme of Charmaz (2003) consisting: (1) initial coding and (2) selective or focused coding. As shown in the codings, the coding process was split between initial codes, secondary themes and major themes. The secondary themes precede the major themes, in accordance with the coding system developed between the interviewing collaborator and myself. This system proved efficient as it enabled us to allocate multiple theoretical, as well as empirical, codes under the overarching theoretical themes that appear in Table 1. The full coding scheme appears as Appendix 4 and the full list of interview codings appears in Appendix 5. These themes were delimited according to the content of our interviews. The questions contained in these interviews pertain to four main topics: (1) the background characteristics and living conditions of the interviewees, (2) their school choice processes, (3) their opinions about black and white schools, and finally, (4) their opinions about the involvement of the municipal authorities in the school choice process. It should be noted that although all parents were asked about their employment status and current occupation, it was not possible to determine the economic status derived from these positions, as there were no income-related questions to our participants. In the results section of this thesis, I will refer to our interviewees by the aliases used in the coding process; our first parent interviewee, for example, will be identified as P1, and so forth. Suffixes “A” and “B” were added to label parent couples when interviews were conducted with both parents simultaneously. In order to answer the research questions of this study, I will provide direct quotes from statements made by the participants, according to the topics discussed. Given the context of white flight as a spatial phenomenon, I will begin by delineating the most important factors of the neighborhood composition of our interviewees, and their social contact therein. Consequently, I will cite the responses pertaining to the main attributes of schools, and will establish the relationship between the parents’ views on ethnic diversity   49  in the Netherlands in general, and schools in particular, in order to ascertain whether these views are consistent with one another. Major themes • Background characteristics (e.g. age, ethnic background, religious orientation) • Neighborhood (e.g. composition, types of contact in the neighborhood, opinion about the neighborhood) • Social contact (e.g. ethnic background of friends, social contact at the school) • The Netherlands as multiethnic/multicultural (e.g. inter-ethnic experiences, opinions about diversity) • Integration (e.g. differences between cultures, language barrier, acculturation strategy) • School choice (e.g. overall process, main attributes for choosing/avoiding a school) • School composition (e.g. perceived composition, opinion about mixed/black schools, ideal ratio in the classroom/school) • School segregation (e.g. white flight, school gate-keeping strategies, opinion about school segregation • External influence (e.g. influence social environment, help from the municipality) • Parent involvement (e.g. importance of parent involvement, language barrier, cultural differences) • Education importance (e.g. responsibility school and parents, cultural differences) • The media (e.g. constructing ethnic stereotypes, political discourse in the media) • Experience with different cultures (e.g. working environment) • Dutch education system (e.g. policy measures, weighting system) Table 2. Secondary codes. 4.1. Parent responses 4.1.1. Neighborhood   50  The residential situation of the parents who participated in our interviews is a background factor that simultaneously affects both their school choice processes and their opinions about the multi-ethnic composition of the Netherlands. Opinions about the neighborhood also help to elicit the parents’ orientations toward inter-ethnic contact, and their willingness to engage in such contact in their living environment. As such, the ethnic composition of the neighborhood may either hinder or offer opportunities for social contact with ethnic out-groups. An interesting finding regarding neighborhood opinions is that despite the fact that most of our informants perceived their neighborhood to be composed of various ethnic groups (primarily the main immigrant ethnic minority groups), this did not induce more intergroup social contact between the parents and these groups. Upon discussing the reasons why inter-ethnic social contact between the parents and these groups does not occur, the majority of parents, native Dutch and otherwise, attribute the reason to the ethnic minorities’ separation strategies. When asked whether she has contact with her Turkish neighbors, for instance, P9 (native Dutch, Eindhoven) mentions that, even though she knows them, they tend to “stick to themselves” and seldom participate in the neighborhood gatherings: “Every year we have a barbecue with everyone in the neighborhood, they will bring some food and everything but they didn't actually participate in the barbecue, they just left the food and said oh we have to go we don't have any time, but yeah, they never came to the barbecue”(P9, personal communication, April 20, 2015). Other parents share the opinion that the neighbors of an ethnic minority background rarely participate in the so-called ‘neighborhood barbecues’ (buurtbarbecues). P19 (native Dutch, Tilburg) lives in a neighborhood where residents gather together twice a year. This parent notices that, even though the Turkish parents do not attend the gatherings, their children do. From these children, moreover, P19 learned that their mother does not attend, as she does not speak Dutch well. P11 (Polish, Eindhoven) mentions, ironically, that even when the municipality finances these types of events in order to foster integration, there are several groups who never attend the gatherings:   51   “Chinese, Turkish people never come, there are more Polish people, and they never come, so the most of the people that come to the barbecue are Dutch” (P11, personal communication, April 22, 2015). She points out, however, that neighbors of Kenyan, Serbian, and Iranian descent do attend the barbecues, and that has created a bond between these groups’ children. As previously mentioned, this opinion was recurrent amongst other parents who live in self- reported multi-ethnic neighborhoods. Some of these parents believe that the lack of contact could also be related to cultural traits, such as collectivism, which differ from the self-ascribed Dutch way of living. P12 (native Dutch, Eindhoven) mentions: “Some of those cultures are used to that children are raised on the streets in a small neighborhood, and there's auntie S, and there's auntie B, and there's auntie F, and everybody's outside in front of their houses, and everybody watches everybody. All the adults, specially the females are watching all the children, and that's how children are raised in lots of countries, and it’s ok, it’s nice, it's a togetherness, it’s beautiful, but it is a big contrast with the society that is like here in Holland, very individual, you have to raise your own child, and if another child is doing something that's not good, you do like this you (puts a hand over her eyes)” (P12, personal communication, April 23, 2015). Furthermore, even the parents who do not consider their neighborhood to be multi-ethnic seem to think that ethnic minorities opt for a separation strategy. When discussing whether less ethnic-homogeneous schools would be positive for the integration of minorities in the Netherlands, P2 (native Dutch, Eindhoven) mentions that, for that to happen, minorities need to “open up” as well: “… These children also come from these protected areas and neighborhoods so their mindset is not as open as well. I mean it's a two-way street, it's not only us thinking something about them, there's the other side as well of course” (P2, personal communication, April 4, 2015). Other parents, in turn, have had negative intergroup experiences. For instance, P16 (native Dutch, Tilburg) moved into the Kruidenbuurt, a neighborhood with a large presence of ethnic minorities, two years ago. However, she is not happy with her decision and states that she chose the first option she had because she was going through a divorce. She notices that her neighbors greet her on the street, and occasionally engage in small-talk with her, but she feels as though they are, unlike herself, rather reclusive: “I'm   52  open for it but no one has used the invitation to come and meet me and my family and that's fine it's their choice” (P16, personal communication, May 18, 2015). Furthermore, she asserts that the only time that the neighbors come together is when there are crime- related problems in the neighborhood, and not for leisure purposes: “there will be a tent on the corner of the street where neighbors can meet and discuss the problem of a break- in, what can you do and how can we prevent it in your house” (P16, personal communication, May 18, 205). Contrary to other parents’ opinions that separation is inherent to the ethnic minorities, the above-cited parent believes that it is only normal for people, including the Dutch, to seek contact with others who are similar to them: “Well I think if you're from some background and you can live with other people with the same background then anyone will fit there, so you look for your own multicultural or religious background… If people migrated to Australia or something, you have complete Dutch villages there. I think that on a smaller scale it happens here too” (P16, personal communication, May 18, 205). In this regard, P18 (Indonesian/adopted, Tilburg) disagrees with previous statements and recalls her experiences of growing up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood outside of Tilburg. In her opinion, native Dutch people are more “private” whereas her Turkish neighbors would always invite her family to dinner, and offered to help when her mother became ill. Indeed, previous positive experiences in multi-ethnic neighborhoods seemed to reinforce a favorable outlook toward intergroup contact. P20 (native Dutch, Tilburg) also grew up in a multi-ethnic environment, where most of his friendships were of Antillean descent. Currently, he lives in a neighborhood with multiple Moroccan, Antillean, Polish, and Bulgarian inhabitants, and he enjoys talking to them, due in part to his own outgoing personality: “I'm an old person so I talk to everybody. If I'm busy in the garden outside, I make conversation, my wife’s very closed but that's depending on people you're open, you're closed” (P20, personal communication, May 20, 2015). A small number of parents recall negative personal experiences during previous intergroup contact. The most detailed of these experiences was described by P17 (native   53  Dutch, Tilburg) who remembered being “discriminated” by her neighbors, whom she identifies as Muslim, for wearing short trousers on the street. Other testimonies suggest that leisure contact with neighbors occurs on a more frequent basis in native majority- dominated areas, and, according to parents in Eindhoven, areas with higher-educated immigrants who work at one of the high-tech companies in the city such as Philips and ASML. In this respect, parents differentiate between immigrants and expats living in the Netherlands: “It's a really good neighborhood, we always call this our little village, and it's not all people from Eindhoven… Because of Philips and ASML, we have a lot of people coming from everywhere” (P6, personal communication, April 15, 2015). “I mean if you look, there are foreigners in this area because mostly the people who work for Philips or ASML are expats… You know, foreigners who are pretty much well educated, I mean the houses in this area are expensive so you cannot just buy them… Most of our link is with our neighbors, they're almost in the kind of level as we are, plus or minus” (P7A, Indian, Eindhoven, personal communication, April 15, 2015). Despite some negative personal experiences with immigrants in their neighborhood, most interviewees believe that residential segregation is an obstacle to integration. They view the concentration of ethnic minorities as detrimental to the multi- ethnic composition of the Netherlands. In Eindhoven and Tilburg, two neighborhoods are singled out as the most ethnic-concentrated, and the ones that parents refer to as most problematic in terms of criminality, i.e. Bennekel and Kruidenbuurt, respectively: “In Eindhoven we have the Bennekel, that's an area where there live a lot of black people, and that's where they go to school and that's not really a school, if you should choose a school from another neighborhood, not many people choose that school, but that has nothing to do with the kids who are at the school, but the neighborhood they live in” (P6, personal communication, April 15 2015). “Yes there is the Bennekel, a working class neighborhood, how do you say it, yeah I don't like to talk in lower class, but if you hear them talking and shouting and the kind of language they use and how the children act so…” (P9, personal communication, April 20, 2015). In this regard, parents gave their opinion as to why residential segregation is not positive, and how the country’s integration policies are accountable for this phenomenon:   54   “I think it is a bigger problem when you concentrate a lot of people from the same background in a same area… That's the biggest problem” (P13, Dutch/Turkish descent, Eindhoven, April 30, 2015) “First everything was put together, now they try to spread it, and it was a big mistake… They put Moroccans in that neighborhood, Antilleans in that neighborhood, Dutch in that neighborhood… You have to mix it, so much better, they’re gonna work together, mix it…. Now they're more separated, but you made the problem in the beginning, see if they solve that in 20 years” (P20, personal communication, May 20, 2015). On the other hand, P18 challenges the idea that policies aimed at eradicating residential segregation are effective. She explains that her neighborhood, which borders the Kruidenbuurt was founded in the 1970’s, when the authorities aimed for the creation of a mixed neighborhood, with both larger and smaller houses, in order to increase integration between different socio-economic levels. However, P18 explains that the project did not turn out the way it was intended: “The Baden Powelllaan is one street over there, if you go across that there are all houses you can rent, and there are a lot of people from Turkey or Morocco or whatever… But it's very weird because it's only one street, which is the line from here to the Kruidenbuurt” (P18, personal communication, May 20, 2015). Having presented our interviewees’ opinions about their living environment, there seems to be no direct consensus on whether policies aimed at reducing residential segregation have achieved their goals. Nevertheless, the ethnic concentration of minorities and their subsequent separation from Dutch mainstream society are considered, almost unanimously, to limit intergroup contact. 4.1.2 School choice I will now present the findings relating to the school choice processes of the interviewees. This section was informed by the responses relating to the school choice major theme of the coding scheme, but also other major themes such as school composition and school segregation. These two themes were key in establishing links between the parents’ preferences and their opinions regarding black and white schools, ethnic boundaries in   55  primary education institutions in the Netherlands, and the phenomenon of white flight. This section will thus help to elicit the main attributes of potential schools, which lead parents to choose white schools over other, more multi-ethnic alternatives. 4.1.2.1. Main attributes of schools affecting school choice processes According to the main attributes of white and black schools listed by the parents, it is possible to distinguish between “tangible” and “intangible attributes”. The former, as the name suggests, relates to, for instance, the facilities and materials of the school, as well as its academic results and educational philosophy. This type of information, furthermore, is explicit, and accessible to the public via the website of each school, and described in detail in their school guides. Intangible attributes, on the other hand, are those that could, as Glazerman suggests (1998), imply an emphasis on affective rather than cognitive outcomes. This relates to other factors, as separate from measurable indicators of quality (i.e. CITO scores), such as the “atmosphere” and “reputation” of the school, and the “impression” or “feeling” reported by the parents during their visits to the school, prior to making a decision. I will thus describe the most salient ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ attributes listed by parents, and how these attributes relate to their school choice processes. 4.1.2.1.1 Emphasis on language and language arrears As seen in Appendix 2, a number of questions were originally aimed at exploring the out- group avoidance mechanisms deployed by parents while choosing schools (Savelkoul et al., 2010; Martinovic et al., 2008; Saporito 2003; Ladd et al., 2010). We asked, for example, whether parents refrained from black schools due to fears of their children becoming influenced by the cultural characteristics of the immigrant minority pupils. However, as one can attest, the most prominent factor for parents to avoid black schools was the language arrears associated with the pupils at these schools. Moreover, the salience of the language factor was also strongly dependent on the differentiation factor, representing the ability of schools to tend to the individual needs of pupils. This factor (Karsten, et al., 2003), in the context of our study, was rationalized as follows: if a child with a learning impediment, such as dyslexia, were to attend a black school with a large proportion of immigrant minority pupils with language arrears, this child would not   56  receive the necessary guidance to overcome his or her impediment. As black schools have to invest additional time and manpower to focus on language deficiencies, they would neglect other academic areas and other pupils’ special needs. With this in mind, the Dutch language proficiency in the classroom occupies a prominent position on the list of relevant attributes in the process of choosing schools: “So I thought when my child needs to learn, but he cannot because all his friends have to learn the language first, then you think well… My daughter had a girl whose parents were French and Russian, and she didn't speak a word of Dutch in the first group, but she was the only one… If you have fifteen children who don't speak a word, and each one speaks two other languages, I think that's a problem” (P11, personal communication, April 22, 2015). “=Iris= our oldest daughter turned four and we went looking for schools in the area, and the nearest school put a lot of emphasis on the Dutch language, and well she didn't need as much guidance ‘cause it was mostly for second generation foreign children” (P12, personal communication, April 23, 2015). “It doesn't matter for me if the culture's different but it matters for me if one particular kid gets lots of more attention because of his background or his language is less than the other kids because then the balance is not ok… In the ideal world they just speak very well Dutch but I don't know if that's realistic (laughter) so for my personal view I think that's good but for me as a mother I want =Pia= to do it well at school so yeah that's a little bit difficult” (P3, April 10, 2015). “I think my fear to not bring him to that school is that he don't get enough attention because the teacher have to help other people more because they don’t know the language… So the teacher have to get a lot of time with them and then he gets less time for =Hank= that was my biggest fear” (P18, personal communication, April 20, 2015). Interestingly, P13, a second-generation Turkish parent, turned down a school for the same reason: “we didn't want to go to the Karel de Grote, that was the first choice… Yeah too many foreigners… I think that in a black school, the children don't learn the language as good as when they're with Dutch children I think” (personal communication, April 30, 2015). Moreover, he mentions that: “Our neighbors, they were here in a black school and the children came home and they said ‘anne’ to their mother (laughter)… Anne is mother in Turkish, because they were so much in a Turkish environment and parents are a little scared about too much influence, I think” (personal communication, April 30, 2015). P16 works as a teacher at a black school in northern Tilburg, and highlights that the same language-related concerns were found amongst immigrant parents as well:   57   “I do see that parents at my school would think that the child is going to lose their native language if they learn Dutch so they don't want that so what you see a lot at my school is that the children are going to school at four years old, and they never had spoken a word in Dutch before, they stayed at home and not even learned to speak a single Dutch word… We have to point at everything (laughter)” (personal communication, May 18, 2015). Furthermore, she believes that the lag produced during the first four years of the child’s upbringing persists throughout his/her life, and since these children will never be able to acquire the same vocabulary as a pupil raised in Dutch, “the achterstand (arrears) will never go away” (personal communication, May 18, 2015). Based on direct experience with black schools, however, parents’ testimonies seem to point toward school-specific scenarios, as their testimonies differ significantly. While many parents agree that language barriers are common amongst immigrant minority pupils, some flee black schools for reasons more specifically related to the attention given to individual pupils. P17 recalls her sister’s experience growing up: “She was dyslexic, and the school hadn't enough time for that because they also had problems because of all the children who didn't speak Dutch very well because they are not integrated so the school also had lots of problems with the language… And that's why my sister didn't get the attention she needed” (personal communication, May 20, 2015). In contrast, P21 who lives in the ethnic-concentrated B-buurt neighborhood in Tilburg, and fled a local black school, mentions that in her son’s class, there was only one boy who could not speak Dutch. In Chapter 2, I reviewed the literature that deals with native language acquisition as instrumental to civic integration in the Netherlands. I quoted the historical analyses of Kroon and Spotti (2011), which reveal the troublesome position of ethnic minority languages as viewed by policy makers and educators alike. According to my findings, the academic performance of the school in regards to language appeared not only to be a key attribute, relevant to school choice, but also a sign of separation of immigrant ethnic groups. In this regard, the language deficiencies that are perceived negatively are the parents’, and not the pupils’. Some of our interviewees argued that the language barrier played a significant role in their decision to either leave   58  or avoid the black school, for the reason that it inhibited social contact between them and the immigrant parents at the school: “Mmm some parents, but not many, talked Dutch when we are at the playground but most of them were just in subgroups and they talked Turkish or another language I couldn't understand then you can go say hello but then again you don't mix” (P19, personal communication, May 26, 2015). “But I think it was difficult here because of the language barrier also, because the children are well-spoken Dutch, but the parents didn't, that is something that I don't understand, they walk into the school and then they are still talking their own language and I think what you do at home doesn't matter, one language, two languages, but at school you have to talk Dutch… You chose to send your kids to that school so you know that they are talking Dutch so I think that you have to let your children see that you stand behind that choice” (P21, personal communication, May 28, 2015). P10 (Indian, Eindhoven) and P13 both mentioned the fact that some schools have prohibition signs at the playgrounds indicating that it is only allowed to speak Dutch within the premises. P10 acknowledged that his son acquired the language at the daycare because the family does not communicate in Dutch at home: “frankly we don't even read Dutch books at home, it's mainly English books” (personal communication, April 22, 2015). However, she reveals that the teachers at school are lenient toward her not being able to speak fluent Dutch: “I think it's very open and welcoming, and that's one problem why we're not forced to learn Dutch properly. Because if it was some other country, and if they only speak their language, then we're really forced to work on our language skills, but over here if they see us struggling a little bit in the language, they switch to English, which is very nice on their part but doesn't give us a motivation to learn” (personal communication, April 22, 2015). In contrast, P13 thinks that the perceived restrictive approach to language in education is not beneficial to the new generations of ethnic minority children, and confides that the same rules would not apply to an English-speaking parent: “Yeah, there are schools here in Eindhoven, where parents are not allowed to speak another language at the playground, it is forbidden… Yeah that's very strange, because I think it [multilingualism] brought our generation a lot of advantage” (personal communication, April 30, 2015).   59   P7A holds a similar view regarding multilingualism: “There was a stigma to put the kids in the Dutch school because we are all English educated and we find it a bit backward to go back to a single language education system. You have to be taught two languages from age four as more or less our belief because it makes kids far more sharp in the long run” (personal communication, April 15, 2015). 4.1.2.1.2 Educational philosophy In most cases, the educational philosophy of schools proved to be a dissuasive factor for parents, and in many cases it was mentioned as a negative attribute for choosing a school. Parents often seemed to avoid institutions with a more “relaxed” or “free” approach to education. This should come as no surprise for parents with children at traditional schools, i.e. those administered by Catholic and/or Protestant boards. Parents from such traditional-oriented schools were explicit about their reluctance to choose schools with a Dalton or Jenaplan philosophy. These two systems are anchored in the ‘new education movement’ of the early twentieth-century, and they are characterized by a progressive approach to teaching that gives more autonomy to the pupils (Braster, 2014). The reasons for parents to avoid these types of schools were based on the incompatibility between the school’s philosophy and their own, but also the personalities of their children, which parents described as either too “shy” to make themselves heard in a less-structured classroom (e.g. P3), or too “energetic” (e.g. P2, P9A) to be given that much freedom. P2 talks about the advantages of having a school with a strict outlook and clear rules, especially since, in her view, her children’s personalities require this type of education: “give them a chance and they'll conquer the world, give them a finger and they'll take your hand (laughter)” (personal communication, April 10, 2015). Other parents echoed this statement: “That’s important, we didn't want to take our children to a free school, to a Jenaplan school… There in the neighborhood you have a Jenaplan school that we don't think it is good for children” (P13, Dutch/Turkish descent, personal communication, April 30, 2015). Talking about the Dalton school, P17 stated that:   60   “Yes, yes, they say when you throw a child into a swimming pool they will swim, and I don't think my child will swim, she will sink (laughter), I think I have a child who has to be taken by the hand” (personal communication, May 20, 2015). “Also the system like Jenaplan or Dalton, I don't believe in much freedom, later it's ok like you are responsible for your own things, but when children are so young, =Hank= cannot choose what he wants to do because if you let =Hank= choose between an apple or candy he would choose candy, and I'm afraid that he has to learn sometimes in life things just have to be a certain way and you have to listen to older people” (P18, personal communication, May 20, 2015). “Jenaplan, we were not interested because it's too open, too free, it needs to be a bit more structured than that” (P7A, personal communication, April 15, 2015). When talking about the different educational approaches, parents often described the more progressive ones as “messy” (P12): “That was my opinion, my feeling, my impression because all the jackets were everywhere (laughter) in the hall, and in Springplank everything was tidy and neat… Well the structure in lessons was different ‘cause at the Hobbitstee that's the school next door to Springplank, it was like, if you excel in Dutch you can go to the 4th group instead of your own 3rd group and if you have a hard time doing mathematics you can go to the 3rd group instead of your own 4th group, it seemed very hard for a teacher to keep up with all the changes and, not quiet, not steady” (personal communication, April 23, 2015). 4.1.2.1.3 Facilities and materials Parents referred to the state of the materials and facilities of the schools as two of the main attributes for choosing or avoiding a specific school. P3 commented that the nearby school lacked the appropriate facilities, due to financial instability: “They don't have the latest materials for teaching so when we looked inside the painting from the walls and the doors was like twenty years ago so we can see that they don't have it financially well so that was I think at the end the most important reason to not go there” (P3, personal communication, April 10, 2015). Conversely, the mother made it clear that her final school choice, a white school, had very modern learning tools, such as digibords, a type of digital blackboard that proved very popular amongst many of our interviewees. P9A also mentioned that they turned down the nearest school option due to poor materials and facilities:   61   “When we came there it was a mess, it's a mess right now we hear (laughter), nothing was organized and the material they're working with was outdated, it felt like it was the same as when we went to school” (P9A, personal communication, April 20, 2015) For some parents, the learning tools were more important than other attributes, such as the religious affiliation of the school. P17 stressed the fact that she did not choose the school due to its Roman Catholic philosophy, but because of its novel materials such as the previously mentioned digibord. Furthermore, other parents criticized the schools they chose for the lack of these modern learning tools: “I mean the fact that they get lessons on a laptop once every two weeks is beyond me, they should do it at least every day I mean they need to get that going, it needs to improve, they're gonna get behind completely and you already know that” (P2, personal communication, April 10, 2015). Apart from the perceived quality of the materials, the facilities, such as the school buildings, seemed to play a role in the decision-making process. P21 (native Dutch, Tilburg) fled the neighborhood black school for a number of reasons, and when asked to give her opinion about the building of that school, she stated that “it was not nice and it smelled” (personal communication, May 28, 2015). Moreover, P18 commented that she visited one school whose classrooms she considered to be “too dark” for her children to attend it (personal communication, May 20, 2015). On the other hand, the building of the black school she did not choose was optimal: “the building is nice there, the trees are nice, it's a rich feeling when you are at the school from how it looks” (P18, personal communication, May 20, 2015). However, the good state of the building was not an important enough attribute for her to choose that school, given its other perceived setbacks. 4.1.2.1.4 Educational performance As stated in Chapter 2, one of the main purposes of the interviews was to ascertain whether educational performance was a decisive factor for parents to avoid and/or flee a black school. Due to recent studies (Dronkers & van der Velden, 2013) that supported the notion that ethnic diversity in schools was detrimental to the academic achievement of both native and immigrant pupils, it was expected that parents would mention this factor   62  as relevant when selecting a white school. While Dronkers and van der Velden (2013) relied on data from the PISA results issued by the OECD, in the Dutch context it is CITO, a private company, who administers the annual school tests to final-year primary school pupils. Based on these test results, the primary education institutions give advice to parents about the secondary educational track that their children should follow. In the Dutch stratified education system, secondary education is divided between preparatory- vocational (VMBO), senior general (HAVO) and university preparatory (VWO). Therefore, test results and the subsequent advice on the recommended tracks for pupils finishing primary school may become influential in the school choice process, as parents are able to consult the performance of all schools in the country. Our interviews, however, do not point in this direction. For some parents, for instance P6, the quality of the school was taken for granted when asked whether she consulted the test results before choosing a school: “Not at all, not at all... I think quality is ok everywhere and well you have to help your kids at home and then we always discuss what they did at school” (P6, personal communication, April 15, 2015) “No I didn’t check out the scores, the average scores will not say anything about how my daughter's going to score so” (P16, Tilburg, May 18, 2015). “Not at all I hate it that every year you see “so many children go to the MAVO” so many go to the HAVO” I think what does it say about my children? No, I don't believe in that, I think it's just coincidence why schools score high or low” (P17, Tilburg, May 20, 2015). “Uhm no to be honest not really, you look at them and they were average like the CITO test says, every primary school you can see how the children in the last group have a kind of test so you can compare it with other schools but it was average and I thought =Hank= has to do it all by himself not because of the school, he's an average boy you don't need extra help” (P18, personal communication, May 20, 2015). “No, no, it was the stories and my gut who told me this is it, this is the school… That's also what I teach my children, when your grades are a six or a seven out of ten and you're happy then I'm happy instead of that your grades are like a 9 or 10 and you're unhappy” (P12, personal communication, April 23, 2015). Other parents took test results into consideration but they were not amongst the main attributes of their school of choice. As an example, P21 (native Dutch, Tilburg) stated that: “No, it was not the most important thing to look at, but when you see the   63  results then you know that your child is learning the things that he has to learn” (personal communication, May 28, 2015). In this respect, it is worth mentioning that the parents who seemed most keen on measurable academic performance were parents of immigrant backgrounds, namely Indian and Polish: “Well we like our children to learn and that was very different at the Springplank, well not everybody was good, but they had a good percentage who learned, it is always fine for a child to learn when the others learn as well, so I thought, well we didn't want our children to be social workers (laughter)… I don't think Springplank is the best from the whole world, but it is just good enough to not bother children to learn (laughter)... Us East European parents are really well-known as the problem parents, because we want the children to learn, learn, learn” (P11, Polish, Eindhoven, personal communication, April 22, 2015). P7A stated that academic excellence was the main attribute he was looking for in a school (personal communication, April 15, 2015). When asked whether he thought that parents from certain ethnicities cared about test results more than others, he asserted that: “Indian and Chinese and Japanese yes that I can almost surely tell you... Others I don't know, less... East Europeans are also extremely competitive, I mean if you look at all our British friends… Yeah they don't care much… Dutch are more like the Americans and British, that's what we think” (personal communication, April 15, 2015). Regarding educational performance, it is important to make a distinction between the perceptions of quality as measurable standardized scores such as the CITO results, and the intangible factors based on reputation and “gut feeling” (P12). I will therefore discuss the relevance of the latter below. 4.1.2.1.5 Intangible attributes The final main attribute of schools as reported by our interviewees is what I refer to as the “feeling factor”. As previously mentioned, intangible factors relate to affective outcomes. It was common throughout the interviews to hear parents talking in abstract terms about their “impression”, the school’s “atmosphere”, and whether it made them “feel welcomed”. These perceptions arise from the parents’ visits to the schools and their encounters with directors and staff, as well as the information they obtain from their   64  social environment. In this regard it was important to detect whether parents sought advice from neighbors, family members and friends before making their school choice. It is important to mention the role of intangible attributes in the school choice process, as, for some parents, these attributes were decisive in choosing to avoid black schools. When parents were unable to discern the qualities of their preferred school vis-à- vis the black school alternative, they resorted to both the feeling factor, and the perceived reputation of the school: “the biggest reason that we choose for that is the school is just very well-known, and we went there and also we start asking the questions and it was this very different feeling yeah, good feeling” (P3, personal communication, April 10, 2015). Intangible attributes were at times explained by juxtaposing them with the bad attributes of a black school such as it being “messy” (e.g. P20). P17, for example, also made comparisons between the welcoming and unwelcoming “feeling” of both school options. Moreover, the feeling factor did not depend only on the experiences of parents but also on the experiences of their children: “What kind of impression makes the school about culture and about the teachers and most of all what kind of atmosphere does my eldest daughter see and feel when she enters the classroom and I think the main reason was the atmosphere in the classrooms” (P19, personal communication, May 26, 2015) “I was already looking at the Wegwijzer and I had a good feeling when I was there, my son was at ease, he played… The feeling of my son was very important” (P21, personal communication, May 28, 2015) As mentioned, the reputation of schools appeared to be measured by the influence of the social environment. P2 made her choice “on the stories of the school and what we heard from other parents” (personal communication, April 10, 2015). Other statements mirrored this influence: “Yes it is in that neighborhood, everybody goes to that school and from the Bennekel I see people going to that school and from other neighborhood also go to that school” (P13, personal communication, April 30, 2015) P16 had the unique vantage point of a teacher, and her experiences working at a black school served as an influential heuristic in her decision. In the following quote, she   65  talks about relying on both her instinct as a parent and her more knowledgeable stance as an educator: “I went to go school shopping, to check out different kinds of schools, because I look with two different eyes, one as a parent and one as a teacher so I know the reputations of the schools nearby and I went to check out as a parent what does my feeling say, but also as a teacher from what does my brain say, what kind of equipment they got here what kind of teachers, what kind of materials what kind of view has the school and so yeah I checked with two different eyes” (personal communication, May 18, 2015). Given her distinctive position, however, P16 sees the influence of the social environment as misguiding because, in her opinion, other parents will only tell stories about the negative aspects of a certain school. Therefore it was important for her to rely on her own experience: “based on the ambiance, on the feeling you get as a parent when you enter the school, if you are welcomed or not” (personal communication, May 18, 2015). Having mentioned the most important attributes listed by parents as decisive for their school choice, I will present the parents’ views on the actual ethnic composition of schools, and the ethnic composition of the Netherlands as a whole. I present these views to better be able to interpret whether the ethnicity of the pupils is in fact a main attribute for choosing or avoiding schools, and whether the parents’ opinions about ethnic diversity are consistent with their school choice processes. 4.2. Views on ethnic diversity in the Netherlands and primary schools When interviewed, parents seldom mention the ethnic composition of black schools as a determining factor for avoiding such schools. Without mentioning the term black school, P2 argued that she would not enroll her children at a school located in the Bennekel, one of the most ethnic-concentrated neighborhoods in Eindhoven, because that school has classes full of Turkish and Moroccan children who cannot speak proper Dutch. In this respect, she described her position as favoring a “healthy mix”. Indeed, apart from the language constraints hitherto discussed, parents referred to the ethnic composition of black schools as disproportionate to the composition of the country. To this effect, when describing the composition of the local black school, P9B stated that there were:   66   “Many ethnic groups, from Morocco, from Turkey, from all different cultures in the same school, and it can be a good thing but it can also be a bad thing… Yeah it needs to be a good representation of the country. If you have a black school, it's not representative of the Netherlands, because it's not a black country” (personal communication, April 20, 2015). The idea of a mixed school was thus fostered, but such a mixture had to be representative of Dutch society. The results in this regard suggest that black schools are not avoided for the reason that they are not composed of a homogenous native Dutch population, but rather for being on the other end of the ethnic spectrum, i.e. very homogeneous, albeit dominated by the main immigrant minority groups. P11 fondly recalled the composition of her children’s daycare (peuterspeelzaal), which was on the same premises as the black school she chose to avoid. In the following statement, she compares the composition of both: “That was very international, it was really mixed, Turkish, Chinese, Polish, everything, but then I heard the school was not like that… The school was just Turkish, Moroccan… That was international, this one not… It was bi-national” (personal communication, April 22, 2015). Additionally, we asked the question whether parents were pleased by the current composition of their chosen school, and if not, in what way it should be different. A number of parents, including P2, acknowledged that the school was “too white”, and that the balance in terms of ethnicities represented was “not great”. A preference for more diversity, both at the socio-cultural and socio-economic level was evident, however, parents were not certain about the proper course of action toward desegregation of schools: “It would be very good for both sides of the students so that they can learn from each other, and the socio-economic if it's low it doesn't mean that they're not intelligent, I mean you have to give children the opportunity to develop… If you take half of the Bennekel school and you put it in the Floralaan I don't think that will work, it's not something that goes overnight” (P2, personal communication, April 10, 2015). When asked about her ideal ratio regarding ethnic composition, P6 mentioned: “That's hard to answer. I don't know, it depends on how the school deals with it… Suppose you have 50% of the kids from another culture that don't speak Dutch that good,   67   and parents cannot help their kids at home, and they need more attention than the average Dutch kid, then it's gonna be a problem” (personal communication, April 15, 2015). The abovementioned quote further reinforces the idea that ethnic diversity in schools is viable inasmuch as each school is able to cater to all types of students. With this guaranteed, a more diverse classroom would be desired: “It's probably the capacity of each classroom which I will be worried about but if it is diverse culture I think I'm more than happy because anyway we live in a very different, uh, mixed cultural place, and I think it's important for them to learn how to respect each other's culture and behave appropriately” (P10, personal communication, 2015) In other cases, parents expressed their concerns about socio-economic rather than ethnic differences. When choosing schools, P7A cared more about the educational level of pupils’ parents: “If you look at most of the foreigners who send the kids to that school [Springplank] for example they're all either high tech campus or ASML or something like that, then you know your kid is going to have a challenging environment, whereas if you go to some other neighborhoods you see that the level of migrants are lower that for us is a bigger issue I mean we are less worried about whether it's a multicultural school or homogenous school but more about what socio-educational level is there that was for us the criteria” (personal communication, April 15, 2015). P9A spoke in similar terms when arguing that a black school was not suitable due to its location and the surrounding environment which she described as negative. She suggested that the school of her children could be more mixed, but in terms of SES, she was comfortable choosing a school whose pupils came from higher-educated households: “For example the Kameleon, there's also Dutch people who come there who just, I wouldn't talk so negative about people but they're on the lower part of the social ladder let's put it like that, over there you see some mothers shouting to each other, and then ok I'm not going to stand between those mothers I don't feel like I'm above them, but it's not comfortable with them” (personal communication, April 20, 2015). More parents, e.g. P12, seemed unwilling to speak openly about their perceptions of socio-economic and ethnic differences when discussing the composition of schools:   68   “I think if you profile it and you can call me a national pig, no that's not my heart, what I'm telling now eh? It's what I see, what I see, the white upper class Catholic is at Springplank, the mixed is at Hobbitstee and the more mixed is at the Kameleon and maybe social standards at Hobbitstee are lower than… Well I don't like the words that coming out of my mouth” (personal communication, April 23, 2015) 4.3. Views on integration In conclusion, parents were asked to give their opinions about integration and the means to achieve it. The majority of parents concur that integration entails a process of learning about the other groups’ cultural values and norms in order to understand and accept these traits. P3 comments that it is not only the responsibility of the politicians to foster integration but also civil society: “I think we don't have to point fingers at the people who has to integrate… We as Dutch people we have to help them as well… Of course I think the language is the main thing because it makes it easier to socialize with the people… Yeah I don't think it's good to place people just in one village with their whole group… We can learn really nice things from each other so I think [integration] it's very good” (personal communication, April 10, 2015). “I don't think it has to be a problem of course everyone's raised in a different way but we can learn from each other you can tell what your rules are, that's what we do with our kids as well” (P6, personal communication, April 15, 2015). In the discussions of this topic the issue of spatial segregation was again brought to the fore as one of the main reasons behind immigrant groups remaining isolated. “I think it can be a problem yes, yes, big problem in the end… If you have subgroups, if you have a problem then you don't talk about it, you don't see it as a problem together. That's not good for the atmosphere in your surroundings no… I think many people are not interested and they don't know why and they just have an opinion without knowing” (P19, personal communication, May 25, 2015). A number of parents raise an interesting issue concerning integration, and the varying degrees of segregation within the Netherlands. These parents point toward intra-national diversity, saying that the success of integration depends on the size of the city where ethnic minorities live. Drawing from their own experiences, P9B and P21 living in Eindhoven and Tilburg respectively, claim that inter-ethnic contact is more easily attainable in smaller cities than bigger ones:   69   “I come from a small village of 28,000 people, but a great percentage is from other cultures, and it was always open, always friendly, the doors were open in the summer and closed in the winter, and everybody was welcome… They always cooked for four more people because you never know who came to dinner… Maybe it's because it was a smaller setting than the city because there are a lot more people here and I think they keep a little bit more distance… It's easy to be alone in a city it's hard to be alone in the village” (P9B, personal communication, April 20, 2015). “In Drunen, I had friends from many different cultural backgrounds, yeah… Everybody knows everybody, and it's difficult here in Tilburg to make friends because everyone is more isolated” (P21, personal communication, May 28, 2015). P13 agrees with these comparisons and specifically refers to the bigger cities of Rotterdam and The Hague as the most ethnically segregated ones: “In Eindhoven it’s okay, it's mixed it is multicultural, but in other cities like Rotterdam or Den Haag [The Hague] you can see a very big community of Surinamese people and Antillean people… For me it is also shocking if I am there… I don't think it is positive to have one big community… I don't think it's okay” (P13, personal communication, April 30, 2015). However, when discussing the cosmopolitan environment of Amsterdam, P19 has a different opinion: “I think that's a pity because the other cultures here are only Polish or Turkish or Moroccan so you can get subgroups… If you talk about Amsterdam, there will also be subgroups but there are so many that it's more mixed because you are responsible for each other and they, I don't know, they've learned to work together because there are so many differences” (P19, personal communication, May, 26, 2015). This last statement seems to reflect the consensus of parents who say that the ethnic diversity of black schools is not the problem, but rather the very few groups that populate them. Consequently, most parents (e.g. P16) also seem to agree that the first step toward changing the composition of schools is to change the composition of the neighborhood. ‘Integration’, however, does not seem to have the same meaning for everyone. For example, P13 defines it more along the lines of assimilation, namely the process of immigrants renouncing their values and traditions in order to be accepted into the society. Therefore, he is not certain whether he agrees with the concept of integration.   70  Furthermore, he believes that immigrants might experience more frustration from trying to integrate without success, than from not integrating at all: “Integration is something like you want to be Dutch, but even if you are born and raised here, you are never Dutch, so to attempt to be a Dutch citizen is not satisfying… You can do everything you want, you can have a dog in your home like all Dutch people, but at certain moments you will get that stamp” (personal communication, April 30, 2015). This parent disagrees with the perspective of the Dutch mainstream society that pushes for more assimilation of ethnic minorities when I ask him what he thinks about the idea that these minorities need to become ‘Dutchified’ (vernederlandst). He responds: “I don't know what that means… I don't think it's okay to force people to do that” (personal communication, April 30, 2015). The struggle for immigrant minorities to integrate in the country may thus be related to the reservations of the native majority toward them. P17 explains that: “Yeah I believe in the good of people, but when I think of Turkish and Moroccan people, yeah, I think bad of them I'm a bit reserved… I have to get to know them… When there's a new Turkish colleague no problem but when I meet them on the street I say hello and I talk to them but they have to convince me that it’s ok… I'm honest, I've had too many bad experiences to believe that they are ok in the heart” (personal communication, May 20, 2015). Moreover, P17 states that she does not ask of ethnic minorities to ‘abandon’ their culture but to ‘combine’ it with the cultural attributes they adopt in the Netherlands. She argues that the groups of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands are often more conservative than the society in their countries of origin. “I think when they go to their own country they have the same problem with integration as here… It's not a problem that they are not Dutch or that they wear a cap [headscarf] but values and traditions from 50 years ago which don’t fit with the modern times are a problem” (personal communication, May 20, 2015). P17 concludes that integration should be a ‘trade-off’: “I don't have a problem with mosques, it’s ok with me if they go there every Sunday, but they also should be in the football clubs for the children… It's all separated like the Islamic schools… I hate them, I think a mix from their own traditions and the Dutch environment would be better” (personal communication, May 20, 2015).   71   Indeed religion seems to play a role, albeit a minor one, in the group boundary process of parents, such as P20 who works as a prison guard, and argues that some immigrant minority individuals often “hide behind their religion”: “Now you have ISIS, it's very strong also in prison. We have to watch very closely so that they don’t become radicalized… They think people who don't believe don't need to live... It’s very hard in prison because they don't know what they want to do with their life, many of them turn to radicalization, and that's behind the religion” (personal communication, May 28, 2015). I have mentioned in this chapter that there is a perceived differentiation between the “good” and “bad” immigrant, depending on their socio-economic status, their purpose of migration, and their ethnic background. In this respect, I obtained very eloquent responses from P13 who has been a target for discrimination, especially after the attacks of September 11: “From that point everything changed… For example I was working with my marketing bureau for this company for years… We were like friends… After that [September 11], I went to their offices in Amsterdam, I rang their bell, and they said, “oh are you coming to bring a bomb here?”… I was shocked, I was really shocked, and I said to myself, “what is that?”... It was very strange and they made jokes about it, from day to day” (personal communication, April 30, 2015). He recounts a similar experience when moving to his current neighborhood: “When we first came here (laughter), a man, Harley Davidson, that kind of man came to me and he said, "what are you going to do here?" I said, "why?”, “where does that question come from?" And he said "if you are going to build a mosque here I'm going to put a bomb here!" (personal communication, April 30, 2015). In contrast, P7A, a first-generation immigrant from India, has had more positive experiences: “That's a positive thing about Eindhoven I mean if you're an Indian they don't look down upon you… I have friends who are Moroccan and they say all kinds of stories about the intercultural situation but generally when they see it's an Indian they think he’s either working for Philips or for ASML or he’s a mathematician, or something” (personal communication, April 15, 2015).   72   P7A gives a very detailed example of how he considers that discrimination works in the Netherlands, arguing that it is mainly carried out by the lower class. The following quote is long, but is worth reproducing in full for the many nuances it provides: “No we don't [encounter discrimination] but in our social strata we barely see anything of that… It is the lower levels of strata where probably those things are more common… I do remember that 18 20 years ago when I was working at a factory and people would suspect that the plan is to close the factory here and take it to India… Then they see it as a threat and they react in a different than when you're in a professional job and a Indian guy comes to work in the software… They also know it is to take it back to India, but the difference between the factory case and this case is that the people in the factory don’t have the mental state to accept change whereas the engineering case although they don't like the work being taken they will still be decent with you… I mean it's just that more educated people can accept change in a better way” (P7A, personal communication, April 15, 2015). In conclusion, parents who flee their neighborhood in pursuit of a white school for their children are influenced by a number of attributes of the schools, but also their social environment. The results presented above suggest that the positive outlook of parents regarding the complex ethnic configuration of the Netherlands does not always translate into more intergroup contact, and subsequently does not guarantee that parents will increasingly opt for black schools. While these parents appear keen on reducing the levels of segregation in both residential and educational domains, this seems to be more of a prerequisite for them to seek contact with ethnic out-groups, than the intended outcome of such contact. In the next and final chapter I will discuss these findings in more detail, and present the conclusions of this study.     73   5. Discussion and Conclusion The present study has enabled me as a researcher to delve deep into the mechanisms underlying the choice of parents to enroll their children in a white school, as opposed to a black school. To this end, the interviews have shed light on the most important attributes of white schools, which lead parents to value them as the best fit for their children. As the previous chapter implies, the most recurring tangible attributes sought after by parents are the Dutch language level of the student population of the school, the school’s educational philosophy, the quality of the facilities and materials, and the school’s commitment to pupils’ special needs, also known as the ‘differentiation factor’. Intangible factors, such as the reputation of the school and the “feeling” it induced, were also regarded as very important. The present study was aimed at revealing the main dichotomies, or “binary structures” (Alexander, 2013, p. 538) that parents opting for a white school perceive between themselves and ethnic out-groups. This aim was grounded on the theoretical propositions of the inter-ethnic relations literature (van Tubergen, 2015; Martinovic et al., 2008; Casanova, 2007), as well as theories about group boundaries (Paasi, 2003; Wimmer, 2009; Bail, 2008). Since a majority of the participants was of native Dutch descent, the study revealed substantial evidence that the main group boundary according to which parents rationalize their white flight strategies is the perceived Dutch language deficiencies of ethnic minorities, which constitutes, in and of itself, an obstacle toward civic integration. Another group boundary that I was expecting to, and did in fact, find in the course of this study was about the religious orientation, or lack thereof, of parents avoiding black schools. However, there was little evidence to corroborate the anti- Muslim attitudes discussed in previous literature about inter-ethnic relations in the Netherlands (Savelkoul et al., 2010), as only a few parents expresses negative attitudes toward Islam, and it remains unknown whether the secularist views of parents had a prominent role in choosing or avoiding certain schools. In addition to identifying applicable group boundaries, this study has unveiled the complexities of the school choice process of parents in the Netherlands. Previous research has hitherto overlooked the fact that the perceived low quality of black schools   74  depends very little on measurable results, such as those obtained from the final-year CITO tests. In addition, few studies have looked into the contrasts between native Dutch parents and immigrant parents when it comes to the importance they attach to the educational achievements of school options. My research did not focus on ascertaining which type of school fares better in terms of academic results, but rather on exploring the perceptions of parents regarding the different types of schools. Indeed, it is interesting to note that in some cases, the schools most often avoided by parents rank higher in academic performance than the preferred schools. One such case is Hobbitstee, a primary school located adjacently to Springplank in Eindhoven. Despite having better academic results than the latter, Hobbitstee was considered an unsuitable option by several parents (i.e. P3, P9A/P9B, P10, P11, P12). Furthermore, some of these parents, i.e. P11 and P12, believed that the reason for ethnic minorities to opt for the Hobbitstee school is that Springplank is administered by the SKPO (Stichting voor Katholiek en Protestants-Christelijk Onderwijs), a Catholic-Protestant board, whereas Hobbitstee is a traditional public school, and thus irreligious. However, considering that Kameleon, another SKPO school in Eindhoven, hosts up to 57% non- western foreign pupils (Hogervorst, 2013), this may hint at the essentialist perceptions of parents who view the “immigrant other” in the Netherlands as inherently Muslim (Casanova, 2007). Furthermore, it is important to stress that many interviewed parents’ perceptions regarding ethnic composition of schools did not always reflect the actual statistics. The classification scheme provided by Hogervorst (2013) based on the ethnic composition of schools in Eindhoven concluded that the Hobbitstee is in fact part of the white school category (16% of non-western foreign pupils). The criteria for categorizing schools as black or white has stirred much debate on its own, partly due to the fact that schools labeled as white are not necessarily composed of only native Dutch pupils. The director of a white school in Eindhoven (D1) complained that the classification of schools is misleading in that it is based on the number of disadvantaged pupils whose parents have only completed primary education, and are thus given a weight of 1.2 according to the weighting system: “The weight of a child for us is important because a child from Bulgaria or Romania or Russia is just as difficult as a child from Nepal… And we are a white school because we   75   have no weight at all, you can’t get extra money for these children because the rules are so crazy, we don't get any euro extra” (personal communication, April 22, 2015). At the beginning of Chapter 2, I mentioned that social boundaries, i.e. boundaries that are exerted at the institutional level (Bail, 2008), can be exemplified by the demographic monitoring in the Netherlands, according to which Dutch-born residents will remain under the ‘non-western foreigner’ category even if only one of their parents is born in a country considered economically disadvantaged. As expressed by D1, social boundaries of this sort not only continue to define ethnic minority individuals in essentialist terms, but also have administrative repercussions when confounding the ethnic composition of schools. It may be true that the rationale for categorizing schools as white or black is no longer reflective of the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity seen in Dutch cities such as Eindhoven, where new migration flows, and new purposes of migration are reshaping their ethnic composition. On the other hand, I found that equating economic disadvantage with non-western origin (e.g. Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean origin) is not necessarily a pernicious practice. D1 mentions that there are specific types of school rankings that distinguish the influence of socio- economic disadvantage on the performance of ethnic minority pupils in primary education. The Dutch news site RTL, for instance, publishes yearly rankings of schools after measuring the socio-economic backgrounds of pupils’ parents, to show the academic progress of these pupils. In the 2014 rankings, many black schools such as Karel de Grote (7.5) and Kameleon (7.8) in Eindhoven, as well as Gesworen Hoek (7.4) and Lochtenberg (7.8) in Tilburg ranked equally to, or higher than, other local white schools such as Floralaan (7.4) and Wegwijzer (7.3) in the respective cities (Cito-scores 2014: Vergelijk scholen in jouw gemeente, 2014). The cited director considers that such rankings are more telling of the educational achievement of black school pupils since they take their socio-economic status into account, and he laments the fact that parents often fail to acknowledge the “added value” of these schools. Another important aspect of this study was the relationship between the participating parents’ views on the multi-ethnic composition of the Netherlands, and of the multi-ethnic composition of primary schools. My questions were specifically aimed at eliciting the parents’ opinions concerning the presence of the largest non-western   76  minority groups living in the Netherlands (Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean), as these groups are the ones mentioned most frequently in public debate when addressing the goals of the country’s integration policies (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). After conducting all of the interviews, it appeared that the reasoning behind the parents’ choice of white schools was inconsistent with their positive opinions about ethnic diversity, at least in principle. Therefore, a pressing topic for future research would be to look into the discrepancies between ideology and practice. All of our participants reacted positively to the Netherlands being a multi-ethnic society. In fact, the ‘mantra’ that multiple parents repeated, almost ad verbum, was that it is not only acceptable, but also desirable for individuals from different cultures to interact in order to “learn from each other”. This approach to integration is reminiscent of what Alexander (2013) describes as a more “symmetrical bargain” (p. 532) in acculturation, whereby it is not only the ethnic minority groups who change, but also the native majority group, which learns to understand and respect the qualities of the out-groups. It is not uncommon, as previous research has shown, that opinions about ethnicity and race are prone to be masked by social desirability (Karsten et al., 2006; Bagley, 1996). These suspicions, however, should be left to studies dealing with the nuances of language. In fact, according to the data in this study, integration and intergroup contact are indisputably regarded, save for a few exceptions, as the ideal scenario in a culturally diverse society, such as the Netherlands. However, many Dutch parents view multi-ethnic classrooms as detrimental to their children’s development. Within the specific domain of education, this negative connotation that diversity has may be influenced by recent studies (Dronkers & van der Velden, 2013), but on a wider scale, the seemingly disparaging opinions on diversity appear to be rooted in the uncontested belief that immigrant minorities, but not their qualities, should be accepted into the mainstream. In regards to social contact between different groups, the interviews revealed that even in those cases where the informants’ social environment provided opportunities for intergroup leisure contact, the social networks of the parents were mainly composed of fellow native Dutch persons. Considering that the parents often alluded to the ills of ethnic segregation as obstacles for civic integration, an appropriate means to foster intergroup contact remains to be seen. In this respect, it seems as though many parents,   77  both native Dutch, and of immigrant backgrounds, credit the lack of openness on the part of certain ethnic minorities, as the main factor inhibiting such contact. Parents often spoke of a “two-way street” (P2) of integration, and the fact that, in their opinion, some immigrant groups are yet to renounce the cultural traits that interfere with this process; traits as symbolic as “not looking people in the eye” (P16), or as instrumental as not learning the host-majority language. P2 for instance, stated: “Having lived in other countries I know that a lot of Western people open up their homes more easily to let you see what their life is like, and I think that for other people coming here one of the biggest issues [is] that we don't know how they're living, and what they're doing, and what their life is like, because it's all behind closed doors” (P2, personal communication, April 10, 2015) In the specific context of schools, P9B stated: “Children in other countries don't have the parties at home with other children, some are more to their own and if it's a school where there are closed communities they do not invite you to come over and play” (P9B, personal communication, April 20, 2015). The joint responsibility attached to civic integration thus appears to tilt to one side of the continuum. However, it is interesting to note that also respondents belonging to one of the large non-western immigrant minority groups gave examples about the reluctance of the out-group to interact with them. P13, a respondent of Turkish descent, stated that: “you have to know Dutch people, they are not like Turkish people making parties, they don't like it, they would come and after that, they are much reserved” (personal communication, April 30, 2015). One may interpret the reasons for why this conclusion is prominent in both native and ethnic minority groups in two ways. Perhaps the most obvious interpretation is that each inter-ethnic experience is more telling of the individual characteristics of the persons involved than of the group they belong to. The other interpretation is that the tendency of people to seek interactions outside their ethnic in-group is determined by the spatial concentration and distribution of the group (for a review on these factors affecting language maintenance see: Yagmur & Kroon, 2003). This interpretation, needless to say, is more likely to concern the interactions of minority groups. Nonetheless, the above- cited testimonies tell us that when native majority parents perceive themselves to be   78  outnumbered by other ethnic groups in a certain environment, i.e. the playground, these individuals will flee this environment in search of their similar others. 5.1. Limitations Since this study focused on parents’ reasons for choosing white schools, one issue that needs to be studied in more detail is the school choice mechanisms of parents enrolling their children at black schools. This would be helpful in investigating whether, as white school parents suggest, the segregation phenomenon in schools is related to the out-group avoidance and separation strategies of ethnic minority parents. The findings of Van Tubergen (2015), for instance, may support the assumption that immigrant parents opt for a non-denominational school due to their own religious beliefs not being represented in private Catholic or Protestant schools. The author claims that non-western immigrants who are not particularly religious will identify less strongly with their ethnic group, and more with their host country (van Tubergen, 2015). Unfortunately, I did not interview enough ethnic minority parents to attest to whether they refrained from choosing SKPO schools because of their religion. Judging from the small amount of interviews with ethnic minority parents (e.g. P16), however, we may assume religion is not a determining factor in this regard. Indeed, P16 who works as a teacher at Lochtenberg, says the school is composed of 95% ethnic minority pupils, despite it being affiliated with a Catholic board. One may rely on previous studies that offer a possible explanation as to why ethnic minority parents opt for black schools. Karsten et al. (2003), for instance, have found that on average, these parents, especially Moroccan parents, find school choice more difficult than Dutch parents (Karsten et al., 2003). Indeed, as De Rycke and Swyngedouw (1999) state, gaining access to information about the education system in the host country (e.g. enrollment procedures) is a tougher task for immigrant parents due to the language barrier. It may thus be mistakenly assumed that parents register their children at a black school after a thorough evaluation of all other available options, when in reality, these parents are not able to engage in the same form of “school shopping” of native Dutch parents (e.g. P16). Ethnic minority parents opting for black schools could also be an issue of spatial mobility, especially for those parents who live in   79  neighborhoods with a high concentration of ethnic minorities, and belong to a lower socio-economic bracket. Even though freedom of school choice is guaranteed for all Dutch parents regardless of their living conditions, it is especially difficult for those parents to enroll their children in a less concentrated school. This is mainly because their residential segregation keeps them anchored to the ethnic-concentrated options in the neighborhood. This, of course, depends highly on the location of such schools and the distance between the neighborhood and the less segregated schools. Another potential limitation to this study relates to the spatial factor of school choice. Even though all interviewees fulfilled the sampling criteria of parents having children who attend a school outside of their neighborhood, their responses indicated that distance was not a determining factor. In this regard, it is possible that parents disregarded the local schools for reasons other than their ethnic composition, and opted for schools further away without first considering the quality of these local schools. This may challenge the premise that parents engage in white flight solely because there are no suitable schools nearby. Many parents did, however, highlight the benefits of attending the local school, such as the fact that it would facilitate for their children to play with their classmates in the neighborhood after school (e.g. P3). Depending on mobility resources, it may be presumed that white flight could be but an unconscious effort in certain cases. Furthermore, it is necessary to recognize the role that ‘positionality’ played during the interview process. Positionality refers to the social position of the interviewer, as comprised of characteristics such as race, class, and gender (Green, Creswell, Shope & Clark, 2007). These characteristics as embodied by the interviewer are known to be influential in interactions with participants during grounded theory studies. In this regard, I recognize that my position as a non-Dutch researcher may have inhibited the openness of the interviewees. If positionality played a role in the answers of the interviewees, however, it was not apparent, and working alongside a Dutch collaborator (for this and other reasons documented in Chapter 3) seemed to contribute to the smooth progression of the interviews. 5.2. Future approaches to school segregation research and policy-making   80  For more than ten years, policy efforts have been made toward countering school segregation in the Netherlands. One example of such efforts is the pilot project initiated in Nijmegen in 2009 where city officials sought to combat segregation based on a pioneering subscription system that limited the quota of weighted or disadvantaged pupils to 30% in all city schools (Gemeente Nijmegen in: Ladd et al., 2010). Ladd et al. (2010) offer a thorough review of several other initiatives currently taking place in cities of diverse ethnic composition, such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Amersfoort, and Tilburg. Whether these efforts will yield positive results in the future is yet to be determined, but the municipal authorities of these and other cities are constantly debating the issue. In Tilburg, for example, an official memorandum (Mts 659) was released in 2010 by the city council describing the concept of segregation on the basis of ethnicity in primary schools as “undesirable”, and calling for neighborhood-based initiatives (Gemeente Tilburg, 2010). It appears that the most feasible approach to promoting more inter-ethnic diversity in schools is to promote the good attributes of black schools amongst parents living in the areas where these schools are located. As noted, the majority of our respondents did not cite test scores as an important school attribute, and this may have repercussions against future efforts of desegregation. Even if black schools succeed in improving their CITO scores, they may still be unable to attract more native Dutch pupils due to the unimportance of such test scores according to the pupils’ parents. Furthermore, considering that language acquisition may itself be the byproduct of intergroup contact, and not the other way around, it is difficult to determine whether improving the language skills of immigrant minority pupils will lead to more ethnic heterogeneity in schools, or whether the ‘language issue’ is in fact used by white school parents as a proxy for ethnic out-group avoidance strategies. In this regard, school administrations should focus on upgrading their learning materials, as well as their capacities to provide individual attention to children with other special needs besides language deficiencies, and should strive to make these improvements known through appropriate marketing campaigns. One of my main findings was that black schools often feature outdated materials and poor facilities. When asked why black schools do not seem to invest enough resources in these highly valued   81  attributes, the recently appointed director at a black school in Tilburg described it as a “vicious circle”, explaining that: “When your numbers are getting low, you don't get much money, when your results are low people see that and then they leave… It's always about all the things together that puts you in a kind of downward spiral and it's up to the director to get some guts and do something enthusiastic… But you have to change the whole picture, not only me but also the appearance, the x factor I call it… You don't know why you like a school but it's there” (D3, personal communication, June 1, 2015). Certainly, the direct role of economic capital in schools has little to do with differences in fees, as there is little variation in that respect in the Dutch education system. It is the extracurricular activities to which parents contribute, where resources are distributed unevenly between black and white schools. Parents may voluntarily donate money and their free time to promote activities that compliment the academic curricula of their children because they consider them to be of equal importance to what occurs in the classroom. It goes without saying, however, that certain parents are less capable of contributing than others. This is why, despite opinions that “there is no support for the view that school segregation along ethnic lines and integration are negatively related” (Musterd and Ostendorf, 2009, p. 1530), the phenomenon of school segregation seems to be the starting point of group boundaries being enacted to restrain the distribution of economic and cultural resources to ethnic minority children, and deprive them of the necessary networks to access better labor market opportunities in the future (Wimmer, 2009). Parents of immigrant background (e.g. P13) seem to recognize the importance of education as the key to personal development but also to integration. So much has been said about the “irreconcilable differences between civil liberties in making residential and educational choices” (Karsten et al., 2003, p. 472), and the will to combat the erosion of the social cohesion in the Netherlands, that school segregation has, perhaps inadvertently, become a symbol of freedom and equality of rights, when it is in fact the opposite. I am of the belief that ethnic segregation in schools is one of the tallest hurdles to the civic integration of minorities into a society that dares not question its “legally anchored norms and values” (Musterd & Ostendorf, 2007, p. 49). The means to bring down this hurdle are largely dependent on the willingness of all stakeholders to take part in a viable solution. It is dependent on how much this phenomenon is seen by policy   82  makers as an urgent problem, but also how much parents and teachers are willing to acknowledge the consumerist approach to education as one of its causes. No policies to this effect can be implemented without such recognition.   83   References: Alexander, J. C. (2013). Struggling over the mode of incorporation: backlash against multiculturalism in Europe. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(4), 531-556. Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Bail, C. A. (2008). The configuration of symbolic boundaries against immigrants in Europe. American sociological review, 73(1), 37-59. Bagley, C. (1996). Black and white unite or flight? The racialised dimension of schooling and parental choice. British Educational Research Journal, 22(5), 569-580. Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied psychology, 46(1), 5-34. Bezemer, J. (2003). Dealing with Multilingualism in Education. A Case Study of a Dutch Primary School Classroom. Akasant. Bifulco, R., & Ladd, H. F. (2007). School choice, racial segregation, and test-score gaps: Evidence from North Carolinas charter school program*. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26(1), 31. Blommaert, J., Dong, J., & Jie, D. (2010). Ethnographic fieldwork. Multilingual Matters. Blokland, T. (2003). Ethnic complexity: routes to discriminatory repertoires in an inner- city neighbourhood. Ethnic and racial studies, 26(1), 1-24. Bobo, L., & Hutchings, V. L. (1996). Perceptions of racial group competition: Extending Blumer's theory of group position to a multiracial social context.American Sociological Review, 951-972. Boschman, S. (2012). Residential segregation and interethnic contact in the Netherlands. Urban Studies, 49(2), 353-367. Boterman, W. R. (2012). Dealing with diversity: middle-class family households and the issue of ‘Black’and ‘White’schools in Amsterdam. Urban Studies, 0042098012461673. Bouras, N. (2013). Shifting perspectives on transnationalism: analysing Dutch political discourse on Moroccan migrants' transnational ties, 1960–2010. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(7), 1219-1231. Bourhis, R. Y., Moise, L. C., Perreault, S., & Senecal, S. (1997). Towards an interactive acculturation model: A social psychological approach. International journal of psychology, 32(6), 369-386.   84  Braster, S. (2014). From Holland to Hamburg: the experimental and community schools of Hamburg seen through the eyes of Dutch observers (1919–1933).Paedagogica Historica, 50(5), 615-630. Carrera, S. (2006). A Typology of different integration programmes in the EU.Center for European Policy Studies. Casanova, J. (2007). Immigration and the new religious pluralism: A European Union/United States comparison. Democracy and the new religious pluralism, 59-83. Charmaz, K., & Belgrave, L. (2002). Qualitative interviewing and grounded theory analysis. The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft, 2, 2002. Cito-scores 2014: Vergelijk scholen in jouw gemeente. (2014, July 7). RTL. Retrieved from http://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/binnenland/cito-scores-2014-vergelijk-scholen- jouw-gemeente De Rycke, L., & Swyngedouw, M. (1999). The value of concentration schools as appreciated by Moroccans, Turks, and unskilled Belgians in Brussels.International Journal of Educational Research, 31(4), 267-281. Denessen, E., Driessena, G., & Sleegers, P. (2005). Segregation by choice? A study of group‐specific reasons for school choice. Journal of education policy,20(3), 347-368. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.) (2005). Handbook of qualitative research Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Dronkers, J., & Van der Velden, R. (2013). Positive but also negative effects of ethnic diversity in schools on educational performance? An empirical test using PISA data. In Integration and Inequality in Educational Institutions (pp. 71-98). Springer Netherlands. Gemeente Tilburg (2010). Raadsnotitie inzake segregatie in het basisonderwijs voorkomen: in de buurt naar school, 11 January 2010 [memorandum] Retrieved from http://bis.tilburg.nl/upload/Commissiebesluiten/2010/C15810.pdf#search=segregatie Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine. Glazer, N., & Moynihan, D.P. (1970) . Beyond the melting pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Glazerman, S. M. (1998). School Quality and Social Stratification: The Determinants and Consequences of Parental School Choice.   85  Goldberg, D. T. (2006). Racial europeanization. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(2), 331- 364. Gordon, M.M. (1964) . Assimilation in American life. New York: Oxford University Press. Green, D. O., Creswell, J. W., Shope, R. J., & Clark, V. L. (2007). Grounded theory and racial/ethnic diversity. The Sage handbook of grounded theory, (Part V), 472-92. Grillo, R. D. (2003). Cultural essentialism and cultural anxiety. Anthropological Theory, 3(2), 157-173. Guiraudon, V., Phalet, K., & Ter Wal, J. (2005). Monitoring ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. International Social Science Journal, 57(183), 75-87. Herweijer, L. (2009). Making up the gap: migrant education in the Netherlands. Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). Hoebink, P. (2009). A World from the Polder: Thoughts on the Netherlands’ Identity and Dutch Development Cooperation. PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen, 187. Hogervorst, C. (2013). Afspiegelingsonderzoek primair onderwijs Eindhoven. Sector Control Afdeling BiO. Geraadpleegd in http://eindhoven.notudoc.nl/cgi bin/showdoc.cgi/action=view/id=772002/type=pdf/Bijlage_1__Rapport_Afspiegelings onderzoek_primair_onderwijs_Eindhoven_2013.pdf Huijgen, V., & Petrany, S. (2010). Segregation in Dutch Primary Schools. Humanity in Action. Retrieved from http://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/313- segregation-in-dutch-primary-schools Huberman, A. M., & Miles, M. B. (1994). Data management and analysis methods. Joppke, C. (2004). The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy1. The British journal of sociology, 55(2), 237-257. Ladd, H. F., Fiske, E. B., & Ruijs, N. (2010). Parental choice in the Netherlands: growing concerns about segregation. Prepared for school choice and school improvement: Research in state, district, and community contexts Vanderbilt University. Karsten, S., Felix, C., Ledoux, G., Meijnen, W., Roeleveld, J., & Van Schooten, E. (2006). Choosing segregation or integration? The extent and effects of ethnic segregation in Dutch cities. Education and Urban Society, 38(2), 228-247. Kroon, S., & Spotti, M. (2011). Immigrant minority language teaching policies and practices in The Netherlands: policing dangerous multilingualism. V. Domovic, S.   86  Gehrmann, M. Krü ger-Potratz and A. Petrovic (eds) Europäische Bildung: Konzepte und Perspektiven aus fünf Ländern. Münster: Waxmann, 87-103. Martinovic, B., Van Tubergen, F., & Maas, I. (2009). Dynamics of interethnic contact: A panel study of immigrants in the Netherlands. European Sociological Review, 25(3), 303- 318. McLellan, E., MacQueen, K. M., & Neidig, J. L. (2003). Beyond the qualitative interview: Data preparation and transcription. Field methods, 15(1), 63-84. McPherson, M., L. Smith-Lovin, and J. M. Cook. 2001. “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschappen. (2013). Leerlingen bao - leerlinggewicht, schoolgewicht, impulsgebied. [criteria] Retrieved from https://www.duo.nl/organisatie/open_onderwijsdata/Images/Leerlingen%20bao%20- %20leerlinggewicht%20schoolgewicht%20impulsgebied_tcm33-27520.pdf Morse, J. M. (2010). Sampling in grounded theory. The Sage handbook of grounded theory, 229-244. Musterd, S., & Ostendorf, W. (2007). Spatial Segregation and Integration in The Netherlands. IN SCHÖNWÄLDER, K.(Ed.) Residential Segregation and the Integration of Immigrants: Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden. Berlin. Social Science Research Center WZB. OECD. (2015). Income inequality [indicator]. Retrieved from https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm Paasi, A. (2003). Boundaries in a globalizing world. Handbook of cultural geography, 462-472. Penninx, R. (1982). A critical review of theory and practice: the case of Turkey. International Migration Review, 781-818. Rijkschroeff, R., ten Dam, G., Willem Duyvendak, J., de Gruijter, M., & Pels, T. (2005). Educational policies on migrants and minorities in the Netherlands: Success or failure?. Journal of education policy, 20(4), 417-435. Ritzen, J. M., Van Dommelen, J., & De Vijlder, F. J. (1997). School finance and school choice in the Netherlands. Economics of education review, 16(3), 329-335. Saporito, S. (2003). Private choices, public consequences: Magnet school choice and segregation by race and poverty. Social problems, 50(2), 181-203.   87  Savelkoul, M., Scheepers, P., Tolsma, J., & Hagendoorn, L. (2010). Anti-Muslim attitudes in the Netherlands: Tests of contradictory hypotheses derived from ethnic competition theory and intergroup contact theory. European Sociological Review, jcq035. Schinkel, W. (2010). The virtualization of citizenship. Critical Sociology, 36(2), 265-283. Schrover, M., & Schinkel, W. (2013). Introduction: the language of inclusion and exclusion in the context of immigration and integration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(7), 1123-1141. Siebers, H. (2009). Struggles for recognition: The politics of racioethnic identity among Dutch national tax administrators. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 25(1), 73-84. Siebers, H., & Dennissen, M. H. (2015). Is it cultural racism? Discursive exclusion and oppression of migrants in the Netherlands. Current Sociology,63(3), 470-489. Singelis, T. M., Triandis, H. C., Bhawuk, D. P., & Gelfand, M. J. (1995). Horizontal and vertical dimensions of individualism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurement refinement. Cross-cultural research, 29(3), 240-275. Statistics Netherlands (2015). Population; sex, age, origin and generation, 1 January, 20 August 2014 [statistics] Retrieved from http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLEN&PA=37325eng&D1=0- 2&D2=0&D3=0&D4=0&D5=0-1,3-4,139,145,210,225&D6=4,9,(l-1)-l&HD=090611- 0858&LA=EN&HDR=G3,T&STB=G5,G1,G2,G4 Stolcke, V. (1995). Talking culture: new boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. Current anthropology, 1-24. Van der Veer, P. (2007, October 10). NRC. Retrieved from http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/van/2007/oktober/10/maxima-heeft-historisch-zeker-een- punt-11408077 Van Houdt, F., Suvarierol, S., & Schinkel, W. (2011). Neoliberal communitarian citizenship: Current trends towards ‘earned citizenship’ in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. International sociology, 26(3), 408-432. Van Tubergen, F. (2015). Ethnic boundaries in core discussion networks: A multilevel social network study of Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands.Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(1), 101-116. Vasta, E. (2007) From ethnic minorities to ethnic majority policy: Multiculturalism and the shift to assimilation in the Netherlands. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(5): 713–740.   88  Verkuyten, M., De Jong, W., & Masson, C. N. (1995). The construction of ethnic categories: discourses of ethnicity in the Netherlands. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18(2), 251-276. Vervoort, M., & Dagevos, J. (2011). The Social Integration of Ethnic Minorities: An Explanation of the Trend in Ethnic Minorities' Social Contacts with Natives in the Netherlands, 1998–2006. Journal of ethnic and migration studies, 37(4), 619-635. Vliegenthart, R., & Roggeband, C. (2007). Framing immigration and integration Relationships between press and parliament in The Netherlands. International Communication Gazette, 69(3), 295-319. Vogelaar neemt het op voor Máxima. (2007, October 8). NRC. Retrieved from http://www.nrc.nl/handelsblad/van/2007/oktober/08/vogelaar-neemt-het-op-voor- maxima-11406653 Waldrauch, H., & Hofinger, C. (1997). An index to measure the legal obstacles to the integration of migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 23(2), 271-285. Wimmer, A. (2009). Herder's Heritage and the Boundary‐Making Approach: Studying Ethnicity in Immigrant Societies*. Sociological Theory, 27(3), 244-270. Wittel, A. (2000, January). Ethnography on the move: From field to net to Internet. In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 1, No. 1). WIN (1998): Wet inburgering nieuwkomers. Staatsblad, 1998-261. ’s- Gravenhage: SDU Uitgeverij. World Bank. (2015). GINI index (World Bank estimate) [indicator] Retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI Yagmur, K., & Kroon, S. (2003). Ethnolinguistic vitality perceptions and language revitalisation in Bashkortostan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 24(4), 319-336. Yagmur, K., & Van de Vijver, F. J. (2012). Acculturation and language orientations of Turkish immigrants in Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 43(7), 1110-1130. Zorreguieta, M. (2007). Toespraak van Prinses Máxima, 24 september 2007 [speech] Retrieved from https://www.koninklijkhuis.nl/nieuws/toespraken/2007/september/toespraak-van-prinses- maxima-24-september-2007/   89  Zorlu, A., & Hartog, J. (2001). Migration and immigrants: the case of the Netherlands (No. 01-042/3). Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper.   90   Appendix 1. Request for participation   91   Appendix 2. Interview questions to parents and directors   Interview questions               parents  Introduction: Words of thanks for the interview  Ensure confidentiality information  Ask permission to record the conversation    Explanation research In Dutch primary schools the ethnic composition increasingly deviate from the composition  of the neighborhood population. These schools are considered to be too white (large  population of native Dutch pupils) or too black (high proportion of non‐western minorities).   In the Netherlands parents are free to choose the school they want for their children.  Therefore it is important to find out why parents make a particular choice.     Questions  1. First we are going to ask something about your living conditions  a. What is the current situation in your household? (single with children,  married/living together with children, living with parents etc.)   b. How many children do you have?   c. In which country were your biological parents born?  d. What is you highest completed education?  e. What are your daily activities? (working, education, household,  unemployed, chronically ill etc.)   f. What is your experience in the professional sphere (jobs)?  g. Are you and your family religious? How important is this faith?   h. Do you live in a multicultural neighborhood? How do you feel about  this multicultural environment?  i. Do you have any experience working in a multicultural environment?  How is/was that experience?  j. Do you have friends/contacts from different cultural backgrounds?  k. How do you feel about the multicultural composition of the  Netherlands?    2. Now we are going to ask some questions about school choice  a. Did you find it difficult to choose a school for your child?  b. Based on which features have you made a choice for this current  school? (positive features)     92   c. Which of the follow features are important (how important and why)  for your school choice?   i. Quality education/ good preparation for secondary school,  good school exam results  ii. Ideas about education/atmosphere/education philosophy  iii. Distance  iv. Education program/methods of teaching (creative subjects,  sport, religion, independency of the pupils  v. Stay over opportunities  vi. Students composition of the school/ social and economic  composition of the peers (social matching! Same ethnicity  and social class)   vii. Fear of losing own culture  viii. School safety   ix. The population of the school/reputation   x. Preferences of the child.   d. Which characteristics should fulfill your perfect school? (what do the  characteristics mean?)  e. Does the current primary school fulfill these characteristics?   f. Was this school your first choice?   g. Why did you not choose another school? (negative features) What are  the reasons for rejecting a primary school?   h. To what extent do you find parental involvement important?       3. The black/white schools   a. Are you familiar with the concepts of white and black school? And  what do you mean by these terms? And what is your opinion about it?  b. Do you have any idea what percentage of immigrants there are at this  school? What do you think of that?   c. What is the perfect ratio in the classroom? (minorities/majorities;  disadvantaged(social low)/ social high   d. What do you think of multicultural schools?   e. Do you think that the people enrolling their children at a multicultural  school are different from you?  f. What are your thoughts when the primary school suddenly changed in  more black? Would you choose another school for your child?   g. Did your social environment have an influence on your school choice?  Did this have a direct or indirect influence?     93   h. Have you ever heard of parent initiatives? (explain) What do you  think of this? Would you think about doing this too?   i. Do you have a lot of/little/ or no contact with immigrant parents?   j. Do you notice any differences in how these parents are involved at the  school?   k. Do you feel that their children are raised differently? And why or why  not? (other values and norms?)   l. What do you think are the main characteristics of other cultures living  in the Netherlands?  m. Do you think these characteristics have a positive or negative impact  on the educational achievement of children?  n. Do you think that parents of immigrant children place high  importance on education?  o. Do your children have friends who come from another country?     4. The municipality and help   a. Have you had any help from the municipality or the schools in your  area to make a school choice?   b. Did you want more help from the municipality?   i. For example:   1. A webshop with an overview and description of all the  primary schools   2. A brochure with an overview  3. An information market?     Interview questions               director  Introduction:  Words of thanks for the interview  Ensure confidentiality information  Ask permission to record the conversation    Explanation research   In Dutch primary schools the ethnic composition increasingly deviate from the composition  of the neighborhood population. These schools are considered to be too with (large  population of native Dutch pupils) or to black (high proportion of non‐western minorities).   In the Netherlands parents are free to choose the school they want for their children.  Therefor it is important to find out why parents make a particular choice.       94  Questions  1. How long are you director of this school?   2. Can you tell us something about the school, what is the vision and what do  you stand for?  3. What are the main features of this school (few key words)?    a. For example:   i. Quality education/ good preparation for secondary school,  good school exam results  ii. Education program/methods of teaching (creative subjects,  sport, religion, independency of the pupils)  iii. Stay over opportunities (continue program)   iv. Student composition of the school/ social and economic  composition of the peers (social matching! Same ethnicity  and social class)   v. School safety   vi. The population of the school/reputation   4. What kind of pupils come especially to this school?  5. Are you looking to attract a specific kind of pupil (socio‐economic, cultural  background)?  6. Are there (a lot of) pupils that come from other urban areas?   7. Why do you think parents choose this school?  8. Are parents involved with the school? Is there a difference between the  backgrounds parents have and the degree of involvement?  9. To what extent are parents involved in school activities?   10. Do you think the ratio minorities/majorities or disadvantaged(social low)/  social high status at your school is good?   11. Are you familiar with the concept of white and black schools? And what do  you mean by these terms? And what is your opinion about it?  12. Do you know the percentages between the ethnic minorities? How much  non‐ western pupils are there in this school?   13. Say the percentages and ask if the director is familiar with this percentages  (emerges from the previous question) ask if he wants to change this  percentage and why  14. Are there also non‐native Dutch teachers at this school?   15. What is the general attitude and atmosphere within the school towards  pupils who are not from the Netherlands?  16. Is there discrimination within the school (pupils towards each other or  teachers to students or teachers themselves?)  17. Are there activities to make the children aware of different cultures?     95   18. Does the school has taken any precautions to reduce segregation?   a. In 2008 in Eindhoven (according to the ED) in the district stratum there  was an upper limit for the school size. In this way, the children of the  district have the opportunity to go to the school in their own  neighborhood.   b. What do you think of this preventive approach?   c. Does this school has something similar?   19. In the paper they also talked about parental initiatives in Eindhoven. What is  your opinion about these initiatives from parents? Have you ever been  involved in something like this?    20. In the newspaper of 2009 (ED) the municipalities, school managers (like SKPO  & SALTO) and school directors have made arrangements to find solutions for  black and white schools. According to the newspaper, the school managers  mainly left it to the directors of the primary schools Do you remember some of  this? Were you involved with this? And what did the SKPO said about it? Do  you know the content of the rules? If you are not familiar with it, what would  you like to do about the problem?   One of the rules from 2009:  initiative proposal of PvdA, SP, GroenLinks and  EindhovenNU; the city was divided into some educational areas. Parents of a district  could choose five or six schools. In a large school with a lot of requests, the children  in the own district have priority.   21. Is the school policy changed in recent years?  22. What is your vision for the future?    96   Appendix 3. Full list of interview transcripts (Available digitally upon request)     97   Appendix 4. Coding scheme Interviews with parents Selective codes Secondary codes Background characteristics • Age • Ethnic background/place of origin • Religious orientation/ affiliation • Household situation • Educational background • Occupation/type of work o Working environment o Ethnic composition of workforce/clients • Children upbringing • Own upbringing • Daily activities Neighborhood • Residential situation • Opinion about the neighborhood o Safety issues • Types of relations/contact in the neighborhood > Social contact • Ethnic composition of the neighborhood • Socio-economic composition of the neighborhood • Neighborhood composition • Opinion about multicultural neighborhood • Description of a bad neighborhood • Diversity of the neighborhood o Ethnic o Age o Household composition o Socio-economic Social contact • Ethnic composition of the neighborhood • Friendship circle of the informant • Friendships of the children • Social contact at the school • Ethnic background of friends The Netherlands as multiethnic/multicultural • Opinion about the Netherlands as a multiethnic country • Inter-ethnic experiences (negative/positive) • Opinions about diversity • Opinion of other Dutch people about immigrants/ethnic minorities • Cultural differences o Collectivistic vs individualistic o Religious vs secular o Cultural maintenance vs assimilation o Patriarchal vs feminist o Conservative vs progressive • Diversity within Dutch native society • Out-group avoidance/social matching (preference for) • Intergroup contact (preference for)   98  Integration • Integration in the school • Differences between cultures • Experiences abroad; to make contact • Target of discrimination • Language barrier • Acculturation strategy (integration, assimilation, separation, marginalization) • Opinions about the Netherlands as multiethnic • Important characteristics of integration • Opinion about discrimination • Opinion about integration • Host society reinforcing group boundaries • Generational change (positive/negative) • Opinions about Dutch culture • Correlation between SES/ethnic background • Residential segregation School choice (All things that have influenced • First choice the choice) • Overall process • Main points for choosing/avoiding a school o Distance o Facilities/materials o Structure/guidance o Attention to special needs o Reputation o Safety o Ethnic composition o SES o Focus on language/ language arrears o Quality of teachers o Classroom/school size o Test scores o School schedule o Vision and mission o “Feeling” o Religious board o Continued education o Fear of losing one’s culture o Victim of bullying • Reason for switching schools • Negative feature of the school • Features to choose a school • Features for a perfect school • Negative/ positive features   99  School composition • Staff composition • Perceived composition • Educational/economic status • Acknowledging the school/classroom as (not) multiethnic • Opinion about mixed/black schools • Mixed schools as positive • Advantage of a mixed class • Ideal ratio in the classroom/school • Reflection of the society • Attitude if the school composition changed to more multi-ethnic School segregation • Reason for the existence of Black/ White schools • School gate-keeping strategies • Opinions about school segregation • Fleeing the neighborhood school (white flight) External influence • Influence social environment • Help from the municipality Parent involvement • Parent participation • Importance of parent involvement • Helping school • Communication/ contact school and parent • Language barrier • Cultural differences • SES Education importance • Responsibility school and parents • Cultural differences • SES The media • Media’s role in constructing ethnic stereotypes • Political discourse in the media Experience with different cultures • Working environment • Opinion about different cultures Dutch education system • Policy measures • Weightings system • Education levels • Integration/parent involvement strategies at school • Cultural awareness programs in school Interviews with Directors Selective codes Secondary codes Background factors • Function within the school • Working experience School features • Basic information • Vision/mission of the school • Keywords of the school • Reason for choosing the school • Priorities • Strengths • Weaknesses/challenges • Measurements School composition • Background of the parents   100   • Socio-economic composition • Residential origin of pupils • Opinion about the composition • Reason why the school is white/black • Opinion about mixed schools • Disadvantage of a white school • Advantage of a mixed school • Composition of the staff White flight • Reason why people reject their neighborhood school • Challenges of black schools Education importance • Education importance and different cultures Advertising the school • How they make the school known The admission policy Parent involvement • Integration/parent involvement strategies at school • Parent participation Personal opinions • Opinions about integration   101   Appendix 5. Full list of interview codings (Available digitally upon request)   102